Patti Dozier/Times-EnterpriseRotary club president Andre’ Marria, left, speaker Stephon Ferguson and Rotarian Jay Flowers chat at the Thursday Rotary meeting.

THOMASVILLE — Rotary District Gov. Court Dowis pointed out to the Thomasville Rotary Club audience Thursday that club President Andre’ Marria is the organization’s first African-American president.

In 1976, the late C.W. McIver was the first African-American to be inducted into the club and the second African-American statewide to become a Rotary member, Dowis told the large Rotary audience.

As Dowis continued to speak, a rich voice sounding exactly like that of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. bellowed from the rear of the meeting room. The voice drew closer as the speaker talked about the history of blacks in the United States.

King was assassinated in April 1968. The speaker’s comments were geared to King’s civil rights battles in the 1950s and ‘60s.

“But 100 years later, the negro still is not free,” said Stephon Ferguson, who is employed by the National Park Service at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park in Atlanta. Ferguson participates in re-enactments and makes historical presentations at the park.

He was 39 days old the day King, 39, was buried.

In King’s voice, which at times trembled eerily like the fallen civil rights leader, Ferguson spoke about segregation, “poverty in a vast ocean of posterity” and blacks who found themselves in exile in their own land.

The U.S. Constitution was a promissory note for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but it defaulted on people of color, Ferguson said.

“We refuse to believe there are insufficient funds,” the speaker said.

Continuing in Kings’ voice, Ferguson said, “Now is the time for justice for all God’s children.”

In 1963, King said that neither rest nor tranquility would come to blacks until their rights were granted.

King urged blacks not to seek freedom “by drinking from the cup of bitterness.”

As King, Ferguson recalled the civil rights leader saying blacks would never be satisfied as long as they were subjected to police brutality and not granted entrance to hotels and motels. They would not be satisfied until the whites-only signs seen by their children were gone.

With his voice trembling, Ferguson delivered parts of King’s “I Have A Dream” speech delivered in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 1963.

He described injustice and oppression of blacks in several Southern states and said he dreamed of a time when children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.

“ … And the glory of the land will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together,” the speaker said, quoting the famous speech. “ … All of God’s children will sing, ‘ Let freedom ring.’

All people will join together and say, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last,” Ferguson’s voice resonated.

Senior reporter Patti Dozier can be reached at (229) 226-2400, ext. 1820