Two hundred Fort Lewis College students, administrators and faculty members took campus solidarity with Martin Luther King Jr. deeper into its fourth decade on Monday.
Immediately behind a banner borne by students Laura Loya and John Marks, campus President Dene Kay Thomas and Provost Barbara Morris led a march, which dates to the 1980s, from the Center of Southwest Studies to the Student Union.
Among the marchers was Athena Cazier, a junior from Colorado Springs, majoring in psychology, who was eager to hear speakers at the open-mic rally at the Student Union.
“I’m interested in hearing about social-justice issues,” Cazier said. “There are issues that you don’t hear about on the news but that are important to people.”
At the Student Union, an 86-member choir under Charissa Chiaravalloti, who directs choral activities on campus, kicked off the rally.
They sang a cappella to two old, civil-rights hymns – “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “This Little Light of Mine.”
The performance marked the third year the choir has participated in the Martin Luther King Jr. Day observation on campus.
“Lift Every Voice and Sing,” sometimes called the Black American National Anthem, was written as a poem in 1899 by James Weldon Johnson and set to music by his brother, John Rosamond Johnson.
“This Little Light of Mine” is a children’s gospel song written in the early 1900s by Harry Dixon Loes, a composer and teacher. The theme comes from a Bible verse.
Initiating the open-mic session, Thomas said that by choosing to attend Fort Lewis College, her listeners were supporting the causes that King espoused.
The importance of the liberal arts, the interactions of an ethnically diverse student body – of people of different cultures and opinions and mutual respect – stand in sharp contrast to recent problems in France and Belgium, Thomas said.
She left her audience with a quote from King: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Katherine Montoya, a freshman from Rio Rancho, New Mexico, said she has seen injustices but intends to rise above them.
“It hasn’t been easy,” she said, but she concluded with lines from American writer and poet Maya Angelou:
“Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise, I rise, I rise.”
After the rally, seven workshops focusing on social justice issues ran concurrently from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m. and then repeated at 4:15 p.m.
Monday night, there was a screening of “Broken Rainbow,” a film about the Black Mesa coal mine. The film depicts how 10,000 Navajo tribal members in Arizona were relocated to make way for the exploration and extraction of minerals.
The film also examines the legal strategies of the company to get its way.
daler@durangoherald.com
