Dr. King Remembered in Vigil

The Student Life section of Utah State Today highlights work written by the talented student journalists at Utah State University. Each week, the editor selects a story that has been published in The Utah Statesman or the Hard News Café, or both, for inclusion in Utah State Today.

 

 

by Catherine Meidell in The Utah Statesman

 

Students, community members, faculty and staff congregated on the Quad Wednesday night [Jan. 13, 2010], while shielding white candles with gloved hands in order to keep their flames lit during a moment of silence for Martin Luther King Jr.

 

USU’s Black Student Union held a candlelight vigil at 5:30 p.m. in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. and brought two keynote speakers to educate the audience on Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement in connection with Human Rights Day. The first speaker was St. Joseph’s College’s political science associate professor David E. Dixon and second was pastor France A. Davis, who marched with King from Selma to the Capitol building in Montgomery, Ala.

 

Davis shook the hands of many USU football players, who attended the event, which began as the audience rose for “The Black National Anthem.” After Moises Diaz, director of Multicultural Student Services, introduced the speakers, Dixon gave a speech highlighting the key role women played in the progression of the Civil Rights Movement.

 

Dixon said, “It strikes me that these women don’t have much in common. What they do have in common is they handed down the Civil Rights Movement to their children.”

 

He said one sure way to guarantee everyone has civil rights in decades to come is to teach young people King’s dream of equality. The Civil Rights Movement picked up speed when women joined the cause, Dixon said, because they had a great influence on younger generations. He listed many influential women in human rights activism from various ethnicities. Some of the listed included Edith Spurlock, the first African-American female judge; Della Sullins, an activist in the Tuskegee School integration and Mary McLeode Bethune, who advised President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

 

Davis spoke next, revealing the four things King told him were necessary in achieving excellence and his experience marching to the front of the Capitol building in Montgomery alongside King.

 

Davis said King looked like an ordinary man from the outside, but “when he opened his mouth, he was a man of greatness.”

 

Davis said he first met King in an interview for an article he wrote, while attending the Tuskegee School. They later met again when King was invited to march to Montgomery after students and citizens from the area were not allowed to vote, Davis said. The students and citizens wanted to bring the attention of racist acts to the nation, and in front of Montgomery’s Capitol building, King executed one of his greatest speeches, Davis said.

 

Davis said he would advise students to follow the four steps King told him to live by in order to achieve excellence.

 

“The first is to prepare as if everything depends upon you,” Davis said.

 

He said the second step was to wait for the “ground to swell,” or in other words, wait for people to accept leadership for a particular issue.

 

“Then you must have a vision that you can communicate to the people – Dr. King said he had a dream, but he had a vision,” Davis said. “Then be the best of whatever you are.”

 

Shannon Stevenson, Black Student Union secretary, said Human Rights Day provokes the realization that racism still exists and there is still work to be done concerning civil rights. She said the fact the U.S. is led by a black president does not mean there is equality throughout the nation.

 

“This celebration means my freedom. My freedom gives me the opportunity to go to school at USU,” said Jo Beyene, Black Student Union vice president.

 

A teacher at Edith Bown Elementary, Marianne Christian, brought her daughter to the vigil and reviewed with her the four steps to achieve excellence, while walking to the Quad with candles in hand. She said the yearly celebration of civil rights is a commitment to move forward in perfecting human equality, but there is a load of work needed to achieve a nation without prejudices.

 

In conclusion to his speech, Davis said, “Be what you ain’t, ‘cause you ain’t what you is. If you ain’t what you is, then you is what you ain’t.”