Click here to view MLK Day slide show

The voice is Anna Deavere Smith’s, but the words and inflections belong to Young Soon Han, a Korean liquor store owner distressed in the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King verdict.

“They got their rights by destroying innocent people!” she cries.

Smith, an award-winning playwright and actress, was the keynote speaker Monday at Northwestern’s the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. Rather than delivering a formal address, Smith chose instead to perform monologues based on interviews she has conducted with people, such as Young, whom she has met around the nation.

University Chaplain Rev. Timothy Stevens, who delivered the benediction concluding the program, estimated that about 1,000 people attended the program at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall. About the same number attended Princeton Prof. Cornel West’s MLK Day speech last year, significantly more than the number that attended NU’s MLK celebration in 2002. Stevens said the strong attendance was an indication that the annual event was becoming established in people’s minds.

In addition to Smith’s address, the program included remarks from University President Henry Bienen, Evanston Mayor Lorraine Morton and Thomas Hayward, a member of NU’s Board of Trustees. The event also featured choral performances by the Northwestern Community Ensemble, Northwestern University Choral Organizations and the Northwestern University Singers.

One major theme of Smith’s monologues was the need to ask questions about contemporary society.

“Your education shouldn’t be about answers,” Smith said. “It should be about questions you leave with.”

Smith used the monologues to raise issues of race and class in America.

As Young, the liquor store owner, Smith highlighted contrasts and conflicts between Koreans and blacks. As black scholar West, she addressed the despair in the black American experience.

“I think if white folks were to experience black sadness, it would be too overwhelming for them,” Smith said as West.

Both the Young and West monologues appeared in Smith’s play “Twilight: Los Angeles 1992.” That play received two Tony Award nominations as well as an Obie Award.

Smith emphasized the importance of the arts and personal communication in an increasingly technological world.

“We couldn’t be here and have this event without the arts, without the human spirit,” Smith said. “Please don’t rely on the wires to carry the message.”

Smith also performed a selection from “A Rap on Race,” the transcript of a 1970 conversation between author James Baldwin and anthropologist Margaret Mead.

Smith’s final monologue was titled “The Excellent Ones,” derived from an interview with educator Maxine Green. Smith, as Green, discussed educational inequalities in America, pointing out that Thomas Jefferson once described public education as a process to find “the excellent ones” and “throw out the rubbish.”

“Anna, we have a lot of work to do,” Smith concluded as Green.

Though the program originally was supposed to include an address by the winner of the NU student Written Expression competition, Stevens said only two students entered, and the essays were received too late to be revised in time for the program.

But Stevens said he was pleased with the other elements of the program.

“I was just delighted Smith used the performance approach,” said Stevens, calling the decision “a pleasant surprise.”

“Capturing those voices just seemed very fitting to the day, ” Stevens said.

Denise Bridges, of Bellwood, Ill., said she attended the program with her family so she could “do something to keep (King’s) dream alive,” and described the program as “outstanding.”

“I think it’s very, very important that my children understand where we’ve been as a people,” Bridges said.

Bridges said she was particularly struck by Smith’s final monologue and the problem of how society reaches underprivileged people.

“They’re kind of like underneath the rubble,” Bridges said. “Are we going to find the gem, the diamond in the rough?”