An Evanston community event Saturday, featuring several youth choirs and a spoken word presentation from a local eighth grader, kicked off the city’s observance of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Celebration and Unity” was held at the Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center, ahead of the official, national observance of the slain Nobel Peace Prize winner’s birthday.
King was born Jan. 15, 1929 and was assassinated April 4, 1968.
The program Saturday included speeches, song and spoken word performances, all paying homage to heroines and heroes of the Civil Rights Movement – past and present. With more than 250 estimated to be in attendance, Evanston Township High School senior Alexis Harris-Dyer served as emcee.
Following the program, a reception offered time for community fellowship.
Tim Rhoze, artistic director of the Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre and producer of the MLK event, said the focus of Saturday’s celebration was on the iconic and transformative movement that ushered in national legislation on equality and desegregation, and on the young people who continue the struggle today.
“We celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the legacy of the young people who operated outside of their comfort zone to be a force for social and legal change during the Civil Rights Movement – brave, youthful individuals from all backgrounds who responded to a call for justice,” Rhoze said.
In his opening remarks, Mayor Stephen Hagerty said that young people in Evanston continue to contribute to King’s legacy by working for equality, fairness and non-violence.
Lorraine H. Morton, who previously served as the city’s first African American mayor, offered a crowd-moving narrative about students from her of hometown of Walnut Cove, North Carolina who led a historic march that forced the integration of the London School in Stokes County.
Other program highlights included a spoken word presentation by Ca’ron Walker, an eighth grader at Dr. Martin Luther King Literary and Fine Arts school in Evanston, that was based on late poet Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise,” and a keynote address by ETHS alum and Northwestern University freshman Nolan Robinson.
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Robinson offered his own message about “how to walk in your own purpose.”
Rhoze said that although he has produced the MLK event for the past seven years, this year was especially exciting because there were three children’s choirs instead of one. The Second Baptist Children’s Choir, Evanston Children’s Choir and Faith Temple Children’s Choir each performed an array of gospel and spiritual songs.
“How special to have that much talent in a celebration of a great man and all the brave people of the Civil Rights Movement,” Rhoze said, “Together we are making our community the place where you are accepted for the content of your character”.
Gina Grillo is a freelancer.