“The dream still deferred.”

That was the title of Sunday afternoon’s talk Shawn A. Cosby gave at the Mathews NAACP’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day service. The New York Times best-selling author spoke of concerns he has over the current direction of the nation, Virginia and the local community.

“As we go into the midterm election cycle, I fear that [King’s] dream is further from begin realized than it has ever been,” he said during the virtual program that was broadcast live over the Zoom platform.

“Across the country, the forces of recrimination and systemic patriarchal prejudice are rising from the precipice of extinction like some Hollywood horror villain that the heroes think they have finally vanquished,” he said. Here in Virginia, he added, we are witnessing “an assault on history and the truth by far right extremists who trot out words like Critical Race Theory and Marxism and many other linguistic boogeymen in order to erase the sins of their forefathers.”

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