Williamstown Pupils Celebrate MLK Day with Art, Essays, Poems
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He "fought with the power of speech," said classmate Matthew Wiseman. "Blacks and whites, equal rights, believing."
Sixth-grader Jose Verter imagined him as a doer of puzzles: "Dr. King would never divide puzzle pieces into separate piles ... he thought they were better off in one clump."
"Honor him every day by being kind to others," urged sixth-grader Lucy Barrett, and "be friendly to people who don't have many friends."
For sixth-grader Sam Kobrin, the slain rights leader was like a cook, a cultural cook mixing up the nation's melting pot from its bland beginnings and filling the air with a freedom that smelled like spices.
With his "I Have Dream" speech, he added "two more ingredients: brotherhood and inspiration," said twin brother Jake Kobrin, reading Sam's essay at Williamstown Elementary School's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration on Thursday afternoon.
 Daniel Finnegan, left, Olivia Davis and Principal Stephen Johnson listen to Marcela Villada Peacock of Williams. |
Poems, essays, posters and a really cool portrait, all the efforts of pupils studying King and the Civil Rights Movement, were on display.
The annual event brings together each year several grades to hear and see the selected works of their classmates and performances by Williams College students in celebration of holiday marking King's birthday. Fifth-graders write poems and sixth-grader essays, and fourth-graders make posters, which lined one wall of the auditorium. Third-graders joined the festivities this year by creating a portrait of King out of dominoes.
The event is organized in cooperation with Williams' Multicultural Center. Williams students help select the best of the works — five poems by fifth-graders and five essays by sixth-graders — to be read at the assembly. One of each are then chosen to be read at the annual MLK Community Dinner at the Williams Faculty House, held Thursday night for the fifth year.
The works to read were a poem by fifth-grader Olivia Davis ("a man with words so powerful they came true ...") and an essay by sixth-grader Emily Sabin, who imagined neighbors seeing King as a "normal child."
"Oh, there's Martin. Little did they know he would grow up to be one of the most admired men in U.S. history. ... Could that be you?" she asked her classmates.
 Peacock shows off her Obama duds |
"I think we do recognize this is a new age," she said, referring to Barack Obama's election. "[This is] the fruit of the Civil Rights Movement you've been writing about."
She reminded them of Obama's mention in his inaugural speech of his Kenyan father, a man who just short decades ago would have been refused service in restaurants just miles from the White House he was about to move into.
Marcela Vilada Peacock, program coordinator for the center, and Barry Goldstein, a professor at Williams, had both traveled to Obama's inaugural with millions of others. It was amazing how pleasant and happy everyone was, said Peacock, dressed in a "I Love Obama" scarf and T-shirt.
 Parent Colin Adams, a Williams professor, displays the domino King portrait. |
The buses in Memphis, Tenn., where she has grown up were divided by a white line on the floor, she told him, and if you weren't white you had to stay behind line. And that's where she rode the bus - behind the line.
"I came today because I know no one will ever have to ride behind a white line again," Goldstein said she told him.
"Don't let anyone tell you you have to ride behind a white line," he said.
