With songs, student readings and a keynote address about how to follow, learn from and extend the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., the Valparaiso University community came together Monday to celebrate the life of the slain civil rights leader.
Students and community members filled the Chapel of the Resurrection, where Imani Perry, a Princeton University professor and author, noted that justice is slow work and encouraged the young people in the audience to find an issue that moves them for years to come.
VU President Mark Heckler said the university was holding its 31st annual convocation in honor of King. In addition to the Perry’s keynote address, programming also included focus sessions and theater, all under this year’s theme, “Our Time.”
King, Heckler said, fought for justice for those of all backgrounds and, as Perry would do in her speech, quoted King often, noting King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” written in April 1963.
King, Heckler said, wrote that “the time is always ripe to do right,” words that resonate more than 50 years later.
“This day, today, his words still pierce our hearts,” Heckler said, noting the bigoty still present now. “Hate crimes are on the rise. The sanctity of the sanctuary is defiled.”
Heckler challenged those in the audience to fight against xenophobia and discrimination, to work next to one another and, as a university community, to work together despite different backgrounds, and to live lives of leadership and service.
“As I look out into this audience, I see hope. You are seeking more than a job and a paycheck. You are seeking a calling,” Heckler said, adding later, “Do not let this time pass. This is our time to answer the calling to do right.”
Perry was born in Birmingham, nine years, she said, after the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963 that killed four young black girls and injured 22 others.
During both her presentation and in an interview before then with local media, Perry emphasized the need for young people to have patience for change.
“Find an organization and prepare to stick with it for the long haul,” she said sitting in a conference room in the Hegel Center, adjacent to the chapel.
Both Generation Z and millennials get a bad rap, Perry said, but she is continually inspired by them.
“There is a real sense of urgency that I feel,” she said, adding that politics is “not the only arena in which you can find community if you are wanting to work on issues.”
Perry received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University before going on to receive her law degree and a doctorate from Harvard University.
Her first public lecture, she said, came when she was 8 years old and she and her mother had moved to Massachusetts. Her school was holding a celebration of the King holiday before it had been acknowledged as a holiday.
School officials thought they were being progressive by having the day off, Perry said, until her mother informed them, “This should be a day on.”
Perry went on to give King’s “I Have a Dream” speech for the school, she said, adding that at VU, the holiday was “clearly a day on.”
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