Fit for a King
Dana Felsted, Staff Writer
They came from all racial backgrounds. They were of all ages. Some were students; some were faculty. Many weren’t from Utah State University at all.
And there were many more of them than were expected.
USU Black Student Union President Brent Miller estimated last year’s attendance at BSU’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day candlelight vigil to be around 20 people.
At this year’s vigil, held Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Taggart Student Center Sunburst Lounge, around 150 men, women and children – many standing for lack of chairs – gathered to celebrate the slain civil rights leader who would be 72 if he hadn’t been shot.
Miller expressed his excitement to see so many people in attendance.
Among the 150 was new USU President Kermit Hall. It marked the first time in 30 years a USU president attended BSU’s vigil.
This year’s celebration was unique also in that it was the first since the Utah Legislature voted last session to rename the holiday Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as most of the country calls it.
Utah was the second-to-last state to name the holiday for King, which until last year was simply called Human Rights Day.
The holiday fell on Monday, and USU students – as well as most other students and many workers across the country – had the day off.
However, stickers handed out at Tuesday’s vigil stressed that the holiday was “a day on … not a day off.”
The vigil featured several speakers lighting candles for major figures in civil rights history, including one lighted by USU professor Michael L. Nicholls for “anonymous strugglers of the past.”
Hall, an acclaimed historian and scholar of the American civil rights movement, was one of 11 speakers at the vigil. Other speakers included four students, two professors, a football coach, an assistant registrar and a representative from the Martin Luther King Jr. Human Rights Commission, an organization which helped sponsor the vigil.
Hall addressed a student population that had never heard King speak and had never seen racial segregation during the American civil rights movement. He considered what King may have found in America today, 33 years after his famous “I Have A Dream” speech.
He spoke of black unemployment, the increasingly diverse population in the United States, racial profiling and America’s overall progress with civil rights.
His address ended by cautioning, “History does not repeat itself, but it surely does rhyme.”
The first candle was lighted for King by Kitty Stuart, a member of the Martin Luther King Human Rights Commission. She presented USU with several plaques of King’s “six principles” to be placed around campus. A candle was lighted following each speech.
As those in attendance listened to an excerpt of King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, each person lighted a candle.
USU student Gabe Carter closed the event with the question, “Of what worth are the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. if they are not celebrated?”