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> MLK tributes across MC
Southsider2k12
post Jan 16 2007, 01:09 PM
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A DAY OF REMEMBRANCE and TRIBUTES

http://www.thenewsdispatch.com/articles/20.../16/news/n1.txt

QUOTE
By Deborah Sederberg, The News-Dispatch

Haki Madhubuti speaks Monday night during the MLK Wall of Fame Recognition Dinner at Park Elementary School. Madhubuti also spoke earlier in the day at LaPorte County’s Martin Luther King observance at Purdue University-North Central. Sara Figiel/The News-Dispatch




Wall of Fame draws large crowd


His mother “worked in the sex trade,” Haki Madhubuti said Monday night at the H.O.P.E. Cultural Center for Social and Economic Change.

He spoke to about 160 community members attending The MLK Wall of Fame Recognition Dinner to honor black individuals who have made significant contributions to the education of the community's children.

Madhubuti also spoke at the Martin Luther King observance Monday morning at Purdue University-North Central.

Madhubuti is an award-winning black Chicago writer and the founder and publisher of Third World Press.

“My mother serviced ministers, priests and rabbis from across the Midwest,” he added.

His sister had her first child at 14 and her second at 16. By 27, she had six children and never married.

“That's my own horror story,” he said.

Too many black children have horror stories, he told his audience of about 160 community members.

Children who have grown up in unspeakable poverty, as well as those who have absorbed racist predictions of non-achievement, will grow into their full potential only after they have recovered from their own horror stories, he said.

Racism, however, cannot become an excuse for low achievement.

“The culture of poverty breeds a culture of low expectations,” he noted.

But parents need not accept those lowered expectations for their own children.

Madhubuti describes himself as “a poet at heart.” He urged parents and teachers to introduce children to the arts as both participants and appreciators.

“Artists are free,” he noted. “That's why people think they are crazy.”

Newly elected Second District Congressman Joe Donnelley said his new job “opens up vistas.”

On Thursday evening, he said, he met Martin Luther King III.

“There was his dad. He has his dad's hairline and his dad's magnetism.”

King's message was powerful, Donnelley said. “He said, ‘It is now up to us. My mom and dad labored in the vineyard, and it's up to us to bring it home.' ”

Fred Dyer, a native of Michigan City's West Side and a 1973 Rogers High School graduate, thanked H.O.P.E. Executive Director Rebecca Williams for continuing to believe in the potential of the youth of the West Side.

A psychologist who often lectures about children in trauma, Dyer said youngsters desperately need someone to believe in them.

When he was in school, John White, a former school administrator, believed in him and White was tough on him, Dyer said. White was glad to see him succeed as well.

“We don't forget those teachers, those principals, those bus drivers,” Dyer said.

White and his wife Mary, were among those honored Monday evening.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The MLK Wall of Fame List

Helping Our People Excel honored dozens of blacks Monday who have contributed to the education of students in the Michigan City Area Schools.

MCAS Superintendent Michael Harding said every school employee who touches a child's life makes a contribution to that child's education.

“H.O.P.E. and the community are saying, ‘You played your role very well',” Harding said.

Plaques with photographs will hang in the H.O.P.E. Cultural Center for Social and Economic Change building to pay tribute to those who served the MCAS for more than 15 years. Some plaques already are on the wall. The names of others will appear on a group plaque.

To remember honorees who have died, friends and family members participated in a candle-lighting ceremony.

The honored come from various areas of education.

€ Teachers: Laura Smallwood, Francine Martin, Larry Allen, Faye Cunningham, Henry Whitten, Winifred Jones, Clara McGee, Willie Thomas, Samuel Roberts, Roberta Dorch, the Rev. John Carter, Jessie Williams, Mary Nell Smith, James Cartwright, Douglas Sims, Margaret Warren, Barbara Jones Slater, Ralph Wynn, Donald Thompson, Velma Harrison, Verna Wilson, Clinton Garvin, Martha Burnett, Eddye Baker and Stella Menifee, Earl Hines.

€ Administrators, counselors and school board members: Allan Whitlow, Roy Britney, Mary White, Melvin Merriweather, John White, Joyce Castle, Emmitt Wise, Nathaniel Clay, Carolyn Threatt, Darlene Hancock, Allen Hancock, Therman Elridge, Alice Blaire and Evonne Stephens-Norvell.

€ Secretaries, parapofessionals, custodians, bus drivers, mechanics: Harriet Wright, LeGusta McDonald, Willistine Roby-Davis, Ray Washington, Louise Mock, Elbon Hairston, Andrew Blash, Leslie Cotton, Tom Frye, Tressie Armstrong, Willie Cain, Jessie Williams, Michael Jones, Robert Henderson, Emma Slocum, Georgia Foster, Francis Dickerson, Lula Butler, Inez Blash, Mamie Davis, Lizzie Cartwright, James Thornton, Ted Ashley, Jimmy McDonald, George Cain, Phillip Lovelace, Norma Tisdale, Gene Howard, Latoya Sanders, Homer Lee and Walter Frye.

- Deborah Sederberg
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