University of Idaho students and staff enjoyed a day off from class and work on Monday, but the true reason for the break was to celebrate the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Leathia Botello, diversity coordinator for the Office of Multicultural Affairs, said the day is an important reminder for students of King and the civil rights movement.
“In the ‘60s when all this change was going on … and there were all these civil rights activities going on and even though he died, he was the face of the civil rights movement and people used him as the rallying point and kept doing work in his name,” Botello said.
In honor of the holiday, the OMA will host a one-woman play, “The
New Faces of America” at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Student Union Building ballroom.
The play, written by Colin
Cox, is a multimedia production featuring seven stories that capture the ideas of diversity and multicultural awareness.
The 65-minute performance will include the stories of a female
biracial college student, a southern gay minister, a female Iraq
war veteran, a native American teenager, a migrant worker, an Appalachian college student and a deaf African-American.
“It will just challenge what we think about diversity and give us an insight about how their stories connect with us and how even though we’re from diverse backgrounds a lot of us have commonalities,” Botello said.
Botello said she encourages students to see the play because it will give them an idea of the diversity that surrounds them and help them relate to those that might be different.
Following the production there will be a discussion with the audience covering the topics of diversity and civil rights. Cox will be in attendance.
Several MLK Day celebrations also took place in Moscow over the weekend, including a breakfast and awards ceremony hosted by the Moscow Human Rights Task Force and a day of service hosted by the ASUI Volunteer Center.
On Tuesday, in honor of the 50th anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the Student Diversity Center showed the original black and white recording of the speech.
“Many of our students have heard it at least once when they were in high school or junior high, but I think it’s important to hear again and keep reminding us of where we were 50 years ago and how far we’ve come and think of all the issues that are going on right now and how far we still have to go,” Botello said.
Botello said whether the topic is gay marriage or religion or even racial issues … they ideas of the civil rights movement are still prevalent to today’s society.
“So I think that although we have come quite a bit farther since 1963, students need to see how much farther we have to go so they can continue to fight for the rights of others that are going to come after them,” Botello said.
Kaitlyn Krasselt can be reached at [email protected].
MLK Day — Fifty years later
