Students attend Martin Luther King Day activities
By JENNIFER WILSON
News editor
Students and staff from area schools gathered Monday to celebrate the birthday of America's best-known civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr.
And for Hillsboro high school and middle school students, that meant an entire day of speakers, performances, and presentations about the experiences of African-Americans living in the United States — both today and yesterday.
Activities began Monday morning as middle and high school students filled the Robert C. Brown gymnasium to hear community members talk about their perspectives as black Americans living in Hillsboro.
After HMS Principal Evan Yoder opened the day's events, HHS principal Dale Honeck began by defining some words that Martin Luther King had fought against — words such as prejudice, bigot, and discriminate.
Honeck defined a bigot as "one intolerantly devoted to his own opinions; fanatic; zealot."
Being a bigot isn't just confined to one's ideas about race; it can also apply to a person's political or religious beliefs, he said.
If being a bigot is about a person's thoughts or attitudes, then discriminating is taking action on those beliefs. Honeck defined discriminate as "to make a distinction and take action against one person or thing; marked by unjust treatment."
Today, discriminating against a person because of race, gender, origin, or religion is illegal, but in King's day, that wasn't the case. The civil rights activist fought to end such discrimination.
"King defeated those ideas in the court system one day at a time," Honeck said.
But even today, America still faces the same issues King faced back in the 1960s.
"We're not done with prejudice and discrimination
The next community speaker was Georgina Munguya, a Hillsboro resident who's originally from Zambia, Africa.
When she was a little girl, she wasn't allowed to eat her ice cream in the same ice cream parlor as white people. She couldn't understand why. It wasn't until she was older that she understood the concept of segregation.
It was also around that time in the 1960s that Martin Luther King's message of equality was spreading around the world.
"That message was engraved in me," Munguya said.
Even though Zambia eventually was de-segregated and became independent, many countries today haven't granted their citizens the freedom most Americans enjoy today. Growing up in the United States is an amazing blessing, Munguya said.
Munguya challenged the students to take a stand for freedom where they live. Even Martin Luther King, Jr., as a teen-ager, probably never predicted that he would have the impact on civil rights that he did.
"Maybe you are the one," Munguya said.
The last community speaker of the morning was Cathy Davis, a rural Hillsboro resident originally from Ohio.
Davis grew up in a typical middle-class family and didn't face as many racial prejudices as her husband, Ron, who had a more difficult background.
But after coming to Hillsboro, Davis found a place where she could help educate others about embracing the differences in others, not shunning them.
"I never considered myself an activist until I moved to Hillsboro," Davis said.
Her activism doesn't just include seeing beyond racial differences — it's about accepting people that aren't quite like us. Maybe it's the new kid in school who's not a part of a certain "group."
The solution? Just be yourself, Davis said.
"Be who you are," she said. "Make a difference."
Hillsboro is changing, so be open to that diversity, Davis said.
The rest of the morning featured performances from the Buffalo Soldiers, two performers from Nicodemus who bring to life notable African-Americans from the Old West. Nicodemus is the only remaining all-black town west of the Mississippi River, with a population of 23.
Activities also included speaker Gerald Norwood, an African-American historian; a flag presentation by the Army National Guard; and speaker Rob Simon. Simon also spoke to Hillsboro elementary students during the morning.
Over at Tabor College, students attended a Monday morning assembly featuring speaker Terrance Micheaux, assistant men's basketball coach at Hesston College.
Micheaux spoke about four African-American individuals that had influenced his life: Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, his mother Alfreda Michaeux, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
King's life greatly shaped his own, Michaeux said.
"He was a man, but he decided to choose the nonviolent path to gain equality," Michaeux said. "He inspired me to understand who I am as a black man, as a man of America, as a man."
Tabor students also participated in the assembly with music, a slide show, and poetry and prose readings.
