As weird as it may sound, Darryl Lockett began preparing for his new position as executive director of the Kennedy King Memorial Initiative when he was just 8 years old.
That’s when he committed to memory the last speech Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ever gave: “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”
Delivered April 3, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, King’s speech was more than 4,000 words and lasted 43 minutes.
Lockett was a member of a group called King’s Kids and Daughters, which met at 3 p.m. on the second and fourth Saturday of each month at the Martin Luther King Center. The program was meant to help children as young as 4 develop public speaking skills, and Lockett grew up reciting many of King’s speeches.
Now, in the role he started Jan. 13, Lockett gets to help continue King’s legacy, which is rather unique in Indianapolis because it’s where Robert F. Kennedy turned a campaign rally into a public mourning for the gunned-down civil rights icon.
The park, with the Landmark for Peace statue, serves in memoriam of King and that historic day.
“It’s humbling,” Lockett said. “Just to work in an organization that has these two men’s names in the organization is humbling. I feel a great responsibility to honor the legacy, but I see it to be a wonderful opportunity in the same sense.”
Lockett, 36, said the Landmark for Peace statue is a hidden gem in Indianapolis right now, and he wants it to be more than that.
He wants busloads of schoolchildren brought to the marker to learn about a tragedy that also has streaks of hope and perseverance.
It’s part of Lockett’s plans to modernize King’s message for the 21st century. The details have changed over the decades, but King’s messages — fighting for social, economic, criminal, environmental justice — can be rewoven and delivered to generations that may learn of King only from history’s formal teachings, not the stories of those who were there.
King and Kennedy left a blueprint for equity and inclusion, Lockett said, and it’s his job to “do right by these two giants of men.”
The young orator has made it back to the place where his knowledge and passion live side by side, but Lockett’s work moved him around the country before.
The Indianapolis native and North Central High School graduate left to attend Howard University in 2001 and didn’t make a permanent move home until now. Lockett worked for the National Diversity Council in Houston for three years, became a political consultant in Washington, D.C., and joined AARP Foundation in 2014.
Lockett and his wife Amanda have a son.
“I can appreciate Indianapolis in a new way,” he said of coming back. “… There’s new neighborhoods in new areas that I’m still trying to learn and navigate. It just seems like there’s a new energy in Indianapolis.”
Lena Hackett, the former managing partner of the Kennedy King Memorial Initiative, said in an emailed statement she’s confident Lockett will not only honor the legacies of Kennedy and King, but “move those legacies to action” by addressing issues of equity and justice.
That’s why Lockett wanted this position.
“To have the opportunity to champion those issues in my hometown was a dream come true,” he said.
Contact staff writer Tyler Fenwick at 317-762-7853. Follow him on Twitter @Ty_Fenwick.
Darryl Lockett
