Martin Luther King, Jr. Program at a local library

On the Martin Luther King Day holiday, I organized a second annual family celebration of him at the Waban Library Center, and had some similar experiences to the Dynamic Diversity Night that I described in another blog posting. While the MLK program was much more focused on the Civil Rights movement and on Dr. King himself, there were still opportunities for families to get to know each other. I advertised through our neighborhood moms email network, the Interfaith Community Service group I co-lead, my children’s elementary school, and the Boston Bahá’í Sunday school list, and about 55 people came, probably half kids and half adults.

As people arrived, I welcomed them and offered them a choice between three art activities at the library tables – illustrating quotes from great peacemakers such as MLK, Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, and Bahá’u’lláh (founder of the Bahá’í Faith), drawing pictures about what they imagine in a world of peace, or drawing pictures of themselves as peacemakers. Then I had everyone gather in a big circle to read I’ve Seen the Promised Land, a book about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Walter Dean Myers. I stopped often to engage the children in the stories and illustrations by having them connect with their own experiences and giving them analogies that helped them understand a bit about the Civil Rights movement. I was very impressed by many of the children’s comments and by their level of knowledge from studying Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at school.

After reading the book together, I split them into small groups of families to discuss some questions about the book that I had prepared, and I enjoyed going around and hearing some of the profound things the children were saying. We came back together in a big circle to sing songs from the Civil Rights movement, led by two singers and a guitarist from the Newton Family Singers, who did an excellent job introducing the important roles that songs played during this period of history. We had a fun time singing together and several kids felt moved to teach the group related songs that they had learned in school or in the monthly Peacemakers class I lead.

We closed the afternoon by creating some group murals with everyone’s hands outlined on big sheets of paper, decorated with images of themselves doing things to promote peace and justice in their every day lives.  Hearing people getting to know each other as they went through the various activities of the afternoon made me feel happy to have done one small thing to honor the amazing life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.