Blacks have betrayed the legacy of the civil rights movement by abandoning God, corporal punishment, education and the work ethic, Judge Tyree Irving of the Mississippi Court of Appeals told a local Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast this morning.

“We’re in a bad fix, folks,” Irving said at the annual breakfast, sponsored by the Omicron Rho Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. “The picture that I see today of African-Americans is not the picture that Dr. King had in mind. It is not why Dr. King laid down his life.”

The breakfast attracted about 200 people to the Vicksburg Convention Center. In addition to Irving’s speech, the event saw several scholarships awarded to junior high students who participated in an essay contest about King, who visited Vicksburg several times before being assassinated in Memphis in 1968.

Included in the audience were several local elected officials.

“We’re reminded of the need to honor Dr. King’s legacy of service to our cities, counties, state, nation and world,” said state Rep. George Flaggs, D-Vicksburg. “That’s especially so this year because of what’s going on in Haiti.” 

Elected to the state appeals court in 1998, Irving presaged his criticism of contemporary black society with praise of King.

“At least for us in America, I don’t know of anyone else short of Jesus Christ who has made a more profound impact on our lives,” Irving said.

Irving, 63, said King succeeded in fighting for civil rights causes because he had “the unique ability to make white folk feel guilty. And they should have felt guilty. You understand the conditions of slavery. It was not fair. It was not what God would have had for any of his creation.”

But blacks have not taken advantage of integration and other accomplishments of King’s time, the judge said.

“I think the first thing that went wrong with us was, we forgot about God,” Irving said. “We are now practicing ‘Christianity Lite’ — not the full dose, not the full load. We ought to go back and practice it the way that Martin Luther King practiced it. We ought to go back and practice it the way that our grandparents practiced it.”

The judge, a native of Leflore County, also said blacks should value education more dearly, contrasting King’s fight for integrated schools with what he described as an African-American culture that values designer clothes more highly than learning.

“And we tolerate it,” he said. “We do not demand excellence from our children.”

Irving urged black parents to discipline their children with corporal punishment and stress to their offspring the importance of work. “If they don’t have jobs, they should volunteer somewhere,” he said.

Irving also blasted black fashion.

“We let our young black men wear earrings in their ears,” he said.  “And, worse than that, we don’t have a problem with our young women dating men like that.”

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Contact Ben Bryant at bbryant@vicksburgpost.com