Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reflection and Contemplation, Uncategorized 3 Minutes

January, in the United States, for some communities,  finds celebrations of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a civil rights leader of the 50s and 60s who was thrown into leadership of the civil rights movement during the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott from December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956.  I work at Kansas State University, and we take the last week in January to offer a variety of events where people can celebrate the legacy of Dr. King.  Dr. King’s last visit was at Kansas State University, so there remains a strong goal to keep that legacy alive.  One of our celebrations is the laying of wreaths at the bust of Dr. King. For the past two years, I have been asked to offer a reflection for the wreath laying proceedings. I thought I’d share  my reflection with you.

As we prepare to lay wreaths at the feet of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., let’s remember his words, “The ultimate measure of persons is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand at times of challenge and controversy.”

For inspiration today, I look to Dr. King’s Letters from Birmingham Jail. Let us reflect on those eloquent words Dr. King wrote to his fellow clergymen who had publicly disagreed with his people’s public demonstrations.

King noted that he was in jail charged with “parading without a permit”.  He said, “Injustice is here in Birmingham, if the Negro man cannot exercise his first amendment rights in acts of peaceful assembly demonstrating for change with non-violence.”  You see, free speech was not recognized in Birmingham when exercised by a people deemed “unworthy” or “un-deserving.” They protested for the “Negro brothers and sisters smothering in airtight cages of poverty in the midst of an affluent society.”

Dr. King emphasized, “If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.”

Dr. King’s message transcends faith beliefs and his legacy rises above many barriers – We must work today to cross those same walls to find common ground in our belief systems, races, nations, values and even political parties.  “Rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the hills of creative protest!”

Yesterday, we heard from Four Star General Lloyd “Fig” Newton who echoed Dr. King’s admonishments that, “Humans are put on this earth to serve one another, and it goes beyond class and privilege.”  Even Dr. King’s favorite song reflects his beliefs of service:

If I can help somebody, as I travel along.  If I can cheer somebody with a word or a song.  If I can show somebody, he is traveling wrong. Then my living shall not be in vain.  If I can do my duty as a human oft.  If I can bring back beauty to a world up wrought.  If I can spread love’s message that a master taught. Then my living shall not be in vain. 

Dr. King’s life and his beliefs take me to the words of contemporary music artist, Anderson .Paak, who says, “Cold stares could never put fear in me. What we’ve built here is godly. You can’t gentrify the hearts of Kings.”

 May Kansas State University as a community defined by pluralism find the common ground to stand together against darkness and hate to find light and love.

As we close our gathering today, I ask that you greet those around you with your own word or action that communicates peace. “Every effort we make to connect is meaningful.”

Thank you for reading.  I hope to write again, soon.

 

 

Published by djhbolton

I am a geographer specializing in human systems. My passion is studying underrepresented populations so that I can assist in their integration into the communities in which they live. I studied Human Ecology because it is a wonderful blend of the disciplines of geography, anthropology and sociology. No matter the context in which I find myself, I am an observer of humans in their environments and how the influences in those settings build and nurture sense-of-self, sense-of-place, and sense-of-direction in educational, familial, and community settings. My work focuses on the cross-cultural and intercultural traditions of multi-lingual populations acculturating into their receiving communities and being successful in educational arenas of higher education. This work includes gathering, analyzing, and writing about health, well-being, and environmental/social connectedness in their communities. My research focuses on Minority-majority, rural, Midwest communities. My role as director of intercultural learning and academic success at Kansas State University allows me to discover more about myself as I work with others in their paths to self-discovery in their own interactions with students and families who come from different parts of the country and the world all converging in educational spaces. Recently, I lived, worked and played in Southwest Kansas, a region marked by Minority-majority populations centers (56% – 68%). Some of my research results are used to address poverty, low educational attainment, poor health outcomes, and cultural norms in multi-cultural settings. I work to assure a representative sample for my research, so I engage in multi-lingual research (English, Spanish, Burmese, French, Tigrinya, and Somali). Building trust and relationships is the key to my success as a multilingual researcher. Presently, my research takes me in the micro-communities of populations represented by nine African countries (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Senegal, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Somalia, and Cameroon), seven Latin American countries, and six Asian countries. Yes, it is rural Southwest Kansas, and many of the densely-settled and frontier rural communities act as receiving centers for refugees and other displaced populations, because of the availability of jobs. I am the recent recipient of National Geographic Society’s Research and Exploration grant to introduce Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to females of color. This inter-generational, intercultural class hosted middle school, high school, and adult females who learned the basics of GIS with a variety of applications from remote sensing to city planning to Google Earth, and to Pokémon GO! By the time the young ladies finished the class, they were able to build cities, map their communities, log trips from their countries of origin to the Midwest. I am in the mid-year of the grant funding, and my target for completion was July 2018. I have new funding to extend this work to new cohorts.

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