The Bottom Line

Issue date: 5/3/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Blair Lee

A celebration was held on Tuesday, April 18 in the memory of the life and accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr. here at Frostburg State University. The celebration was an evening of musical and staged presentations celebrating freedom and equality. The event was held at 7:30 p.m. in the Pealer Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center.

The evening featured performances by FSU faculty, staff, and students. FSU students performed a selection from "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" by the late playwright August Wilson.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 and died on April 4, 1968. Between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over 2500 times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles.

In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience, and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," a policy of the Negro revolution. He planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters.

He directed the peaceful march of 250,000 on Washington, D.C., where he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream." He conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of 20 times and assaulted at least 4 times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

Robin Wynder, director of the FSU Diversity Center presented an original work called "Reflections." This work pays tribute to the life of Rosa Parks, a black seamstress whose refusal to relinquish her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala. almost 50 years ago grew into a mythic event that helped touch off the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's. The work was also about Coretta Scott King, who was the wife of Martin Luther King, Jr., and a noted community leader in her own right. Both of these women were legendary civil rights activists that passed away within the past year.

Shavonne Green, a student and attendee of the events commented, "I thought that the MLK Celebration went well. I appreciate the fact that the University celebrated the life of such a historical and remarkable human being. Dr. King stood for peace, desegregation, and loyalty. I appreciate everything that he did. I wouldn't even be in Frostburg if it weren't for his strong will, and determination."

Musical selections for the evening included performances by pianist Betty Jane Phillips, the FSU Chamber Choir and FSU's Unified Voices Under God's Dominion. A special multi-media educational display, featuring Dr. King and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, was on exhibit in the Performing Arts Center lobby.

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