Community honors memory of MLK through local service events

Published 2:00 pm Monday, January 12, 2015

Members of the community convened to march from Huley Park to the Georgia College Arts & Sciences Auditorium in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy during Monday's Day of Service.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was many things: a humanitarian, a pastor, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and one of the best orators in American history, but he is best known for his dignified leadership in the American civil rights movement.

A holiday in his honor was first celebrated in 1971 in many U.S. cities and states, and it was made a federal holiday in 1983 and first observed Jan. 20, 1986.

Falling on the third Monday of every January, which this year is Jan. 19, M.L.K. Day is observed by millions across the U.S. by volunteering their time and energy in a day of service to their communities.

Georgia College has several activities planned to honor King’s memory, and the community is invited.

A Times Talk will be held at noon Jan. 14 in the Georgia College library. The topic is a New York Times article written by King and published Aug. 5, 1962, titled “The Case Against Tokenism.” Tokenism is defined as a symbolic effort to do something, such as hiring a small number of minority groups to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality in the workplace. The talk will detail experiences that King himself had in Albany, Ga.

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At 6 p.m. Jan. 15, Georgia College will have a screening of “Brother Outsider,” which is about Bayard Rustin. Rustin is often called the “unknown hero of the civil rights movement.” He was a mentor of King and helped organize the 1963 March on Washington. Rustin lived as an openly gay black man in the homophobic and racist 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

MLK Day itself, Jan. 19, will be a day of service for Georgia College students, the community and community organizations. Several different groups will perform community service and volunteer activities around the community starting at 8 a.m. At 11 a.m., students, alumni and members of the public will meet at Huley Park for the annual march, which this year will march to Flagg Chapel Baptist Church. Marchers will make stops at the Black Heritage Plaza and the Baldwin County Courthouse before arriving at Flagg Chapel by noon. Robert Fuller of 100 Black Men and Emmanuel Little, who is in charge of Call Me Mister, a male connection program at Georgia College, will give speeches at the church.

At 1 p.m., marchers are invited to meet back at Huley Park for a cookout.

At 6 p.m., Jan. 22, Georgia College’s Theatre Department and Georgia Cultural Cultural Center, which is part of the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity, will present a Martin Luther King Day performance. Directed by Kristi Papailler and followed by a panel of experts, the performance will contain a dramatic reading of portions of selected speeches by King. The readings will take place in the Campus Black Box Theatre.

Georgia College will partner with Oconee Citizen Advocacy to participate in the Waddie Welcome Reading Jan. 28. This reading of “Waddie Welcome & the Beloved Community” by Tom Kohler and Susan Earle tells the story of Waddie Welcome and his impact on Savannah, and the world. The book is short and can be read in as little as 45 minutes.

The reading will take place at 6 p.m. at Peabody Auditorium.

The last event Georgia College has planned is a screening of the film “Boycott,” which tells the story of King’s first boycott of the Montgomery Bus System in Montgomery, Ala., and his mentorship with Bayard Rustin. The film will be screened at the Collins P. Lee Community Center at 6 p.m. Jan. 29.

All of the events listed are open to the public.

Deitrah Taylor, the Cultural Center coordinator at Georgia College, from whom information for this story was received, said students are very aware of community outreach.

“My personal challenge to all who are associated with King Day is to do a service activity at least once per semester,” Taylor said.

Taylor said students are willing to do community service activities and volunteer their time and energy for different projects in the community.

“At the GIVE Center, kids are enthusiastic about helping,” Taylor said. “That’s just one of the things that are so special about Georgia College students.”