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Following King's trail
March filled with scenes that inspire hope, realization of past pain
By JOANIE BAKER, The
Daily News,
jbaker@bgdailynews.com/ 783-3234
Friday, February 6, 2009 12:02 PM CST
Justin Burrus pulled a bright white Ku Klux Klan hood over his dark face and
peeked through tiny jagged holes.
The Western Kentucky University freshman from Louisville said it took him a
lot of courage to cover himself with a blanket of hate for his own
African-American race.
Burrus watched as nearly 100 students and faculty, many of his own color,
looked at him with fear in their eyes and stepped away as they made their
way down the hill Thursday night during a candlelight vigil to honor Martin
Luther King Jr.
As part of Black History Month, Western held a march from the colonnade at
the top of the hill down the Hall of Champions inside E.A. Diddle Arena. But
to call it just a march is like saying King was just a leader.
It was a tour of history with living scenes dappling every curve of the
walk. In the darkness of the evening, a student dressed as King glowed in a
spotlight from behind a podium as his famous “I have a dream” speech was
read into a microphone.
Around the bend, students with signs reading “I Am A Man” lined a sidewalk
as a distant chant echoed from a neighboring dorm window, “We Shall
Overcome.”
But eventually the group would step right into history. A small set of steps
that students casually take to classes each day is divided by a small
handrail. Thursday night it was divided by color. Two arrows pointed in
opposite directions for the “colored” students to move to the left and the
“white” students to take the stairs to the right. Though side by side and
only divided by a thin metal rail, the concrete paths were strikingly
different.
Burrus loomed in the faces of the left side passers as many others chose to
disregard the directions and take the right side steps just to distance
themselves from what Burrus represented.
Without speaking, touching or chasing the marchers, Burrus evoked a fear in
many.
“Courage helped me put this on because at first I was afraid how they might
react, like they might be going to hit me,” Burrus said. “But just to see
their reactions from the inside looking out rather than the outside looking
in, it was strange.”
The group also passed nooses hung in trees and even a small herd of sleeping
bags curled on the concrete below a sign that read “Superdome” - a reference
to Hurricane Katrina survivors who huddled for days in the New Orleans
stadium.
Kameron McNeal, a junior from Madisonville, said while he has seen the news
on TV and read the history in textbooks, seeing people, especially mock
Klansmen, in real life was startling.
“I didn’t look in (Burrus’) face. I looked past him,” he said. “It makes me
more grateful that we don’t have to do these things and we’re not living in
that era. It makes me thankful we’re in a new day.”
McNeal said he was glad he braved the biting cold to face history firsthand.
“A girl asked me earlier, she said, ‘Are you really going out there? It’s 20
degrees,’ ” McNeal said. “I said, ‘People stood out when it was 10 degrees
so we could walk up this hill.’ ”
 --
Click
here for Daily News photos of the candlelight vigil.
Veleashia
Smith,
assistant to the director of the office of diversity programs, said she
organized a similar march when she worked for the University of Kentucky.
She said the first year it drew 500 students and faculty and kept growing
over the next three years. Smith said when she came to Western, she was
asked to bring that program with her.
“This might give them a heightened sense of awareness of thinking what
people have overcome to get us to where we are today,” Smith said. “We just
elected Barack Obama and the whole country is so enthusiastic, so it is a
time for us to recognize the past ... we must stop and reflect and see it
firsthand.”
The tour ended with an Obama impersonator reading a recent speech echoing
the same call for equality that the group had heard at the top of the hill.
Before a reading of Dr. Seuss’ “The Star Bellied Sneeches,” and poet
Conscious Thought’s recital of his poem, “Thinking Out Loud,” senior Chasity
Rodgers from Bowling Green reminded everyone that King’s dream was not
fulfilled with Obama’s presidency.
“Has the dream been fulfilled? No, but progress has been made,” she said.
“We need to wake up. The dream is bigger than this and it has not been
fulfilled. It is so much bigger than the (election of) Barack Obama. That is
an example of progress, but we are the future.”
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