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Director of Diversity Sharon Howell was 11 years old and living in South Carolina when four girls were killed in a racially motivated bombing at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, 阿拉巴马州. One of those girls was Sharon’s age. Sharon remembers asking her mother, “When I go to church, will I be killed?”

In a recent upper school assembly honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Howell and faculty colleagues John Wood and John Grega revealed some compelling stories of struggle during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. And seniors Michael E.——艾丽卡·J.，以及Emily M. described some contemporary examples of prejudice from their own experiences. Together, they illustrated the impact Dr. King had on our world and the relevance of his messages today.

“It’s hard for us now to imagine the risks that King and others took,” explained Wood. 图片, 镜头, and testimony from the documentary “A Time for Justice” gave students a startling look at the Montgomery bus boycott, the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, and other key events of the time.

学生 could see, 例如, how going to school was like “going to war” for the nine blacks who first integrated Little Rock’s all-white Central High School. Gun-toting white soldiers protected them.

Switching to recent times, Michael described how “moving from Minnesota to Texas was like moving to another country.” Michael saw prejudice unlike any he had witnessed before. To classmates he posed the rhetorical question, “Stereotypes, where do they get us?” and urged them to consider King’s message about the danger of “violence of the heart.”

Emily talked about an exchange with some Hispanic men who insulted her, thinking she could not understand their Spanish. She did, and she chose not to confront them. “We have the power to change a day, for better or for worse. So pick carefully.”

Erica talked about how, as one of two blacks in her elementary school class in Virginia, she encountered racism from an unknowing classmate. “I’m glad I’ve grown up in [the McDonogh] community, where diversity is celebrated,” she said.

In closing, Erica recalled Dr. King's dream that one day his children would live in a nation "where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

"We've accomplished a lot, but we still have a long way to go," she said.