Chapel Hill, UNC Celebrate MLK Week

Temperatures were so cold on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the National Weather Service issued a warning about staying outside too long. It was because of the severely cold weather that the Chapel Hill – Carrboro chapter of the NAACP decided to change their plans and begin the march early.

Starting at Peace and Justice Plaza in downtown Chapel Hill, the gathered people marched down Franklin Street toward First Baptist Church like they do each year. It was the beginning of their MLK Day Commemoration, as they later held a rally, featured a speaker from UNC’s Black Congress and hosted a church service.

NAACP member Robert Campbell has participated in the march for many years and said he was happy to see that freezing temperatures didn’t stop people from joining.

“It don’t take too many seeds for a great harvest,” he said. “This is just the seed of the beginning of the harvest of continued justice.”

Chapel Hill councilwoman Karen Stegman marched with her children and wife. She participated because she said applying racial equity to local government’s policies and actions is a crucial step.

“It’s so important to think about how government historically has contributed to some of the inequities in our society and our community,” Stegman said, “and how we can as a community proactively counteract that history and even current practices that contribute to continuing structural and institutional racism.”

The Town of Chapel Hill itself celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a municipal holiday for its 35th year, two years longer than it’s been celebrated as a federal holiday. Town employees also held their annual celebration in King’s honor on January 18, featuring an art contest and a gospel choir performance.

UNC held a campuswide initiative the entire week to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s beliefs and ideals. The Office of Diversity and Inclusion hosted a banquet, a film screening and the opening of an art exhibit in the Stone Center. The week was culminated with a keynote lecture from Ben Jealous, a former president of the national NAACP. Jealous, who ran for governor of Maryland in 2018, said in an interview before his talk he believed Chancellor Carol Folt’s removal of the Confederate monument on the campus known as Silent Sam was justified and commendable.

“I think we should all be proud of your chancellor for having the courage to stand up and to pay the price for it,” he said, “to make sure the children of the Carolinas and our nation are taught accurately at this university.”

In his speech, Jealous went on to encourage taking similar stands of action, speaking out against injustices and seeking a purpose as impactful as Dr. King’s.

“And I believe,” he said, “that we can and we will take our country to a much better place than we are in right now. But the only way we get there is we each figure out why we’re here and we get on with fulfilling our mission.”

Chapel Hill, UNC Celebrate MLK Week

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