Judge Alexander lays down the law: ’Equity matters’

The Honorable Joyce London Alexander, the nation’s first African American Chief United States Magistrate Judge and first African American woman judge of any court in Massachusetts, was happy to be home in Cambridge.

With her new husband — Tuskegee, Ala., Mayor Johnny Ford — by her side, the woman Cambridge Mayor Ken Reeves called “the daughter of Cambridge” delivered the keynote address at the 22nd annual Cambridge NAACP Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast before a sold-out audience at the Cambridge Hyatt Hotel.

Her role that morning was a familiar one — just 12 years ago, she delivered the keynote speech during the organization’s 10th annual breakfast. She searched for that speech, but couldn’t find it.

“I wanted to see if we still had a healthcare system that made people sick just thinking about it,” said Alexander. “Or a prison system that was still becoming a growth industry, or an education system that was still flawed in an educated city. I wanted to see if the axiom, ‘The more things change, the more things stay the same,’ still existed. I wanted to see if things changed for the better, and if so, compared to what?”

Upon reviewing new statistics, she said she concluded that issues of equity matter now more than ever.

“Equity matters because inequality is still extant in employment, the justice system, housing, education, healthcare and the environment,” said Alexander.

She read a laundry list of statistics, pointing out a number of inequities across the country. In the U.S., approximately one-third of Latinos (32.7 percent) and one-fourth of African Americans (19.6 percent) live without health insurance. Communities with high percentages of people of color (15-25 percent) are four times more likely than those with a lower percentage of minorities to live among hazardous waste sites. Blacks and people of color comprise more than half of the female prison population, Alexander continued, noting that incarceration is not an equal opportunity punishment.

Blacks are incarcerated at a rate of 2,531 per 100,000, compared to 393 per 100,000 among white males. Focusing on the male prison population, there are 717 white males incarcerated for every 100,000 in the country, compared to 4,919 black males per 100,000. The disparities increase for males between the ages of 25 and 29.

“These statistics are advanced to lament a simple, but often forgotten point: our country must ensure that all citizens, regardless of socioeconomic background or race, are entitled to equal access to basic human rights,” said Alexander. “As citizens, we have a duty, not a burden, to reach back and lift up all segments of our respective societies to enjoy the rights and freedoms [as part of] your covenant of citizenship.”

Alexander concluded on a high note, taking her listeners on a “train ride” through black history and naming some of African American culture’s greatest achievers along the way.

“Although history has afforded us and society little knowledge of the contributions of African Americans, we are a people replete with creativity, resiliency, overwhelming individual capacity and leadership,” said Alexander.

That fortitude is clearly seen in the other Cambridge individuals honored during the breakfast.

The 2007 Martin Luther King Scholarship was awarded to Cambridge Rindge & Latin High School seniors Anthony Riley, who will attend Johnson & Wales University, and Mekonen Gendebo, who plans to enter University of Pittsburgh. Like the scholarship awardees, Alexander’s path to success started when she received the Boston NAACP scholarship to attend Howard University.

Other honorees were the Rev. Dr. LeRoy Attles Sr. of St. Paul A.M.E. Church, who received the Freedom Fighter Award; the Rev. Dr. Howard McLendon of Massachusetts Ave. Baptist Church, who received the MLK Service to Community Award; the Rev. Virginia Ward of Abundant Life Church, who received the MLK Youth Leadership Award; and Lenora Jennings, principal of the Benjamin Banneker Charter Public School, who received the Cambridge NAACP Education Award.

Also in attendance was Gov. Deval Patrick, who spoke to the young people about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“When Dr. King gave his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, he was 34 years old,” said Patrick. “Before stepping to the forefront of the movement, he had led nothing bigger than a church.”

Looking at the students, the governor continued, “That’s not a small task, because as a young man, his leadership had not been tested at that scale. He stepped forward, claimed the American conscience and changed America.

“That is what we expect from you. That is the opportunity you have,” Patrick said. “All through your lives, you will find people around so weighed down by cynicism, so brought down by disappointment that they will tell you what the limits of your own imagination ought to be. Don’t listen. Because if you do, and if I had, I wouldn’t be standing here right now.”