Celebration
Rice and Dontre Hamilton.
This year, more than 3,000 Milwaukee Public Schools students submitted work for the celebration. Winners were chosen by a jury for speech, visual art and writing for students in kindergarten through grade 12.
Along with the student contest winners, groups such as One Nation for Youth Arts & Healing, an African dance and drum ensemble, and the Latino Arts Strings performed.
Ariana Cawthorn, who won the speech contest for grades 11 and 12, said she wanted to relay an important message.
“We can take a stand for those who feel like they can’t take a stand for themselves —those who feel like just because of their size or race they can’t do things, which is absolutely not true,” she said just before delivering her speech in Uihlein Hall. “You can be any age, height or race and do whatever you want.”
Cawthorn attends Eastbrook Academy and wants to become a psychiatrist after high school to help people who feel alone.
Ameen Atta, a 10th-grade student at Salam School, extended the conversation from racial discrimination to point out current injustices.
Atta mentioned how people of the Muslim faith, his faith, are portrayed and the bravery of women in the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment.
Paul Mathews, president and CEO of the Marcus Center, said it is because of society’s pressing inequalities that honoring King’s legacy is “more important now than ever.”
“(King) may not have been talking about that in 1967, but it’s important that we take a stand on issues like that. If we care about these issues then we need to stand up and speak to them and our voices have to be heard.
“There is so much divisiveness,” he said. “It’s just unfortunate.”
A few speakers, including County Executive Chris Abele and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, looked to President Donald Trump as a source of that divisiveness with his rhetoric and policy regarding immigrants, Muslims and other minority groups.
“Rather than having an individual who is appealing to our better angels, we have someone who is not appealing to our better angels, who is appealing to our lesser angels,” Barrett said.
“I would love to be in a situation where I could say that the leader of our country was a positive moral source in our lives. But what we’ve seen demonstrates that’s not the case.”
One artwork by 12th-grader Grace Newton showed a politician standing at a podium, blood dripping from his hands with a quote from the president: “There’s nobody that’s done so much for equality as I have.”