Kalamazoo to honor legacy of MLK

By Carly Kuppe
Western Herald

On Dec. 18, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. came to Western Michigan University to speak to students, faculty and community members four months after his “I Have a Dream Speech.”

This week, Kalamazoo will play host to a number of community-wide events to honor King with the theme, “The Strength to Love.”
“We have a very powerful title this year,” said Tony Dennis, MLK Committee chairman.

One of the bigger events, “MLK Celebration and Public School Students Visitation Day,” is for students from a number of public school districts in Southwest Michigan, Dennis said.

The event will give students a chance to hear what options are available to them after graduation, Dennis said.

“We want to give [students] some type of hands-on activity,” he said.

In addition, Lee Jones, Ph.D., from Florida State University as well as president and CEO of Inspire magazine, will be the guest speaker at the event.

This event will take place this Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the East Ballroom of the Bernhard Center.

Another notable event, the Northside Ministerial Alliance MLK Community Celebration, will feature guest speaker Rev. Otha Gilyard, Ph.D., former president and founder of the alliance.

“A combination of people from our community come out to [this event],” Dennis said.

The event will take place this Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Galilee Baptist Church located at 1216 N. Westnedge Ave.

The other big celebration day event is the “March to MLK Park,” starting at 3:30 p.m. at the flagpole at Kanley Chapel, Dennis said.

This year, 500 students have already signed up to participate in the march. Nearly 680 people attended the march last year, Dennis said.

Last year’s turnout was outstanding, despite the blizzard-like conditions, Dennis added.

Poster painting for the march will be held at 2:30 p.m. in the Bernhard Center.

“We have a host of other events that we encourage students of the community to come out and participate in. We’re going to continue making this program the best we can,” Dennis said.

“We encourage people to take a look at all the activities listed on our Web site and participate,” he said. “We have an outstanding community of people, and we want to reach out and include everybody.”

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Posted by heraldstaff on Jan 14 2010. Filed under Breaking, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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