King was a king.
Actress and human rights activist Yolanda King, the eldest daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., opened with this message in her keynote address to students Monday in a rousing theatrical monologue that highlighted Northwestern’s MLK Day celebrations.
Speaking to the beat of recorded background music, King spoke emotionally about her father’s legacy.
“My father was a king, not the kind with servants at his feet,” King said, “but the kind that served the powerless, the tired, the disrespected, feet that had been barred from reaching a mountaintop called the American Dream.”
In her presentation at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, King urged students to carry on her father’s fight for freedom, justice and opportunity, all part of what he called “The Dream.”
“I am a 100 percent card-carrying believer in ‘The Dream’ — that’s capital ‘t’ capital ‘d,'” King said. “It is a dream about freedom, freedom from exploitation, poverty and violence, where every child can have the opportunity to very simply be the very best that he or she can be.”
King also incorporated monologues and short acting pieces about her father, the Civil Rights Movement and Rosa Parks into her speech.
During one monologue King portrayed a young black girl in Montgomery, Ala., riding an integrated bus for the first time. Adding a bit of humor to the presentation, she said, “I bet you old Jefferson Davis is turning over in his grave.”
Pick-Staiger officials estimated that about 1,000 people attended the event, which also included performances by the Alice Millar Chapel Choir and the Northwestern Community Ensemble.
Katherine Bridges, a long-time employee of NU’s accounting department, was one of the people who gathered in Pick-Staiger.
She said she met Rev. King when he spoke at the First Methodist Church of Evanston in the 1960s.
“Dr. King has left a great legacy for us to follow and it is up to us to carry on where he left off,” Bridges said. “It is every American’s responsibility to make his dream come true, and the dream was for a united nation.”
The ceremony was broadcast live in the Ryan Family Auditorium, the Owen L. Coon Auditorium and on NU Channel 1. About 180 freshman seeking to fulfill a Diversity NU requirement attended the viewing in Ryan while about 70 students attended the viewing in Coon.
In the opening ceremony, Evanston Mayor Lorraine Morton said students will not have “the depth of feeling that we old-timers have who lived through the agony of the civil rights movement,” but she urged the crowd to use the holiday to ask the questions, “Is the present war moral? Is it democratic? Is it necessary?”
School of Education and Social Policy Dean Penelope Peterson, the chairwoman of the event, called it a chance for us to “rededicate ourselves to the important values and ideals that Martin Luther King taught.”
“As an educator, I think that we always need to take time and reflect and reeducate ourselves about things that we know and believe in,” Peterson said
Medill freshman Amber Jones said she was moved by King’s speech.
“I thought the speech was phenomenal,” she said. “Yolanda had great presence, she is very engaging, and I think she really gave a deep message which people will listen too.”
The Daily’s Christie Ileto contributed to this report.
Reach Jason B. Gumer at [email protected].
