King's legacy of pushing for change praised in Hampton University's MLK march
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Posted By: How May I Help You NC on January 17, 2017 HAMPTON — Jocelyn Gilchrist had two reasons to bring her children to the Martin Luther King Jr. Day march at Hampton University on Monday. For one, she wanted to teach her kids — Madison, 10, and Josiah, 8 — about the slain civil rights icon, who he was and what he stood for. For another, she wanted to "show off my campus" and "get them excited about college hopefully." "I didn't just want it to be just another day off," said Gilchrist, a 2004 HU graduate who now works in real estate and teaches early childhood development at a local community college. It didn't seem to be a wasted day. At home in Chesapeake, the kids said, they would likely be watching TV or playing video games. But on Monday, they talked about Martin Luther King's legacy on their young lives. What’s more adventurous than metallic treatments on your favorite footwear? Reebok x FACE Stockholm's latest metallic pack takes your street style to the next level by offering one of its most icon... "I'm glad that he did what he did so that we have freedom today to be able to go to school and not have to be segregated," Madison said. Added her little brother: "I'm glad that he did that so that we don't have to go through what back in the day they had to. Now we can live longer, and now we can have a better life." For the past eight years, HU has included a march as part of its traditional MLK Day festivities. Monday's event began on Emancipation Drive, with hundreds of marchers walking the half-mile or so to the Robert C. Ogden Auditorium. That's where the marchers gathered for songs, prayers, an interpretive dance and an impassioned speech by Michael Anthony Battle, the former longtime HU chaplain and once the U.S. Ambassador to the African Union. "Who more to sway your opinion than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?" said senior electrical engineering major Cameron Abney, 22. "I feel I can only hope to leave half the legacy as he did with my own journey." In the African-American history course that all HU students take, he said, King's life and legacy was "a big emphasis." Nyia Fairley, 21, a senior from Chicago, who is this year's "Miss Hampton," praised King for how he "kept headstrong, kept his faith and how he didn't let all the adversity get to him." "When people were trying to combat him, he stayed calm, he stayed neutral and focused, and that's what I really admired about him," she said. "I really did admire how he was a strong advocate for nonviolence." And she still seeks the unity King sought. Though today's world "doesn't compare to Jim Crow and segregation," Fairley said, there's still lots of racial strife these days. "I hope that one day that we can just be a unified America," she said. On the march through HU's campus, James Wills, 69, of Newport News, carried a sign encouraging politicians to restore voting rights to past convicted felons to get them "out of chains." He also carried a walking stick on which he had stuck several "I voted" stickers — many with American flags — that were turned upside down. An upside-down flag, he said, is widely known as "a distress signal," and he means it as an SOS for the nation. "The march signifies a new beginning," Wills said. "There's enough spiritual radiance that change can happen now." Russell Myers, 60, of Hampton, said Monday's march was his first ever MLK march. King "brought all nationalities together" in a peaceful way, he said. "But we are divided once again, over power — money and power. ... You can see it and feel it." Twenty years ago, Myers said, "there was a little bit of harmony and unity." But now, he said, "things are upside down. I get mine, you get yours. All for self. And that's bad." During the keynote address at Ogden Hall, Battle said King knew well that human beings are larger than the individual, "and that the success of each was bound to the success of the other." As for black life in America, Battle said, things aren't all bad. After all, he quipped, we "still have a black president for five more days." He complimented President Barack Obama for having two black attorneys general. To strong applause, he credited Obama with reducing the incarceration rate among African-Americans during his tenure. And Battle praised various accomplishments of black Americans in all walks of life. But things could be much better, he said. Not only is there "repeat offenses of police abuse" and the "devaluing of black life" that has caused "appropriate protest in the streets of our nation," Battle said, but income inequality is in a bad way. Too little is spoken, he said, about "the hard and uncomfortable truth" about a growing income disparity among black Americans. And poor white people can't be ignored, either, Battle said. Though the racial element of inequality is a real one, he said, the "recent election" has made clear that "there is also too little conversation about the poor and dispossessed in white rural and small town communities." But human beings, Battle said, underestimate their ability to force change. "The truth of the matter is that you and I, you and the persons seated next to you, I and the persons next to me, we in fact have both the capacity and the moral responsibility to be agents of transformation ... of the world," he said. Yes, that's difficult, he added, but God is on the side of making things right. "We have the creator of the universe, the creator of heaven and earth standing with us, encouraging us, calling us, inspiring us and assuring us that we can — we will, we must — be transformative and reconciling." In his closing prayer, the Rev. Jerome A. Barber, of the Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Temple in Hampton, praised the crowd for "not taking a day off, but a day on." The next four years, he said, "we're going to have to lean on each other," alluding to concerns about the incoming administration. But "no matter is who is living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," Barber said, "God is still in control." After the event, Ayanna Fields, 21, a junior from Kansas City, said she found Battle's speech "invigorating," and a "reminder" about King's legacy. Many of the good changes in today's world, she said, built on King's actions. "Something like this brings a little reminder that although we don't always realize it or take a moment to think about it, these are the after-effects of what he has done," Fields said. Dujardin can be reached by phone at 757-247-4749 http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-... If you enjoyed this article, Join HBCU CONNECT today for similar content and opportunities via email! |
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