Kids bring passion, politics to MLK event
Church sponsors 33rd annual holiday weekend gathering.
Lots of COLUMBUS — grownups spoke, but young people stole the show Thursday at a Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration Downtown.
It was the 33rd annual gathering sponsored by the Ohio Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Commission. Held at Trinity Episcopal Church in anticipation of Monday’s 89th anniversary of King’s birth, the event featured some prominent speakers — including Gov. John Kasich.
But what really got the audience going were the students who won this year’s Statewide MLK Oratorical Contest.
Addison Captain, an 8-year-old from Bedford, earned instant points for poise, straining to the tips of her toes on a stool so she could just barely see over the podium. Working without a script, Captain struck a series of poses as spoke, growing gradually louder as she reached her peroration.
“Fairness, justice and equality are exactly what Dr. King dreamed of and I do, too,” she said.
Elena Earley, a 9-year-old from Columbus, reprised one of King’s best lines, saying, “Dr. King wanted his for children to grow up in a world where they would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
She then asked the audience to get to its feet, join hands and then — perhaps borrowing a technique from former President Barack Obama’s eulogy in the wake of the 2015 Charleston church shooting — she sang a short song.
The past year has been a fraught one, with President Donald Trump making a number of racially charged comments and blasting NFL players as “SOB’s” for taking a knee during the national anthem to raise awareness about police brutality toward blacks.
King himself didn’t shy away from political controversy. He used peaceful disobedience to shine a spotlight on discrimination and poverty in the segregated South and later in the North.
But at Thursday’s commemoration, most adult speakers steered clear of political talk, with Kasich even turning away from King’s activism to focus instead on his faith.
“What we tend to gloss over is that Martin Luther King Jr. was a preacher man,” Kasich said, launching into an examination of the question, “Why are we here and what is our purpose?”
But two of the students who spoke had no qualms about bringing up politics.
Quoting Benjamin Franklin, 11-year-old Alexis Cunningham of Columbus said, “Justice will not be served until those who are not affected are just as outraged as those who are.”
She noted that in the year since NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began his protests, blacks have continued to die at the hands of police.
And Nana Eshun, a 15-year-old from Canal Winchester, said she was grateful to come to the United States from her native South Africa, where blacks were officially second-class citizens until 1991.