LWA Antics

Recalling the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s impact

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“Who cares about Martin Luther King? “He didn’t do anything for us.” Statements like these are what prevent our community from progressing.

Can you imagine what Lawrence Woodmere Academy would look like if Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. never spoke his mind or the Civil Rights Movement never existed?

Second graders, who aren’t concerned about society’s racial divide, wouldn’t be able to sit together at lunch. Students from different backgrounds wouldn’t be able to share their academic talents and there wouldn’t be enough people to play on the sports teams.

The students wouldn’t have as many teachers to teach them history or math or English or science, and we would never have a Multicultural Day or be able to sing traditional Hanukkah songs at the assembly before winter break.

LWA students live up to the essence of King’s dream everyday. People from different nationalities, ethnic groups cultures, and religions are able to learn and play together in our school’s community.

King believed in love and care and encouraged many people to participate in peaceful protests for equal rights. The freedom to sit with someone who is different from you or participate in several clubs and sports allows us to understand what it means to stand together. Standing together and respecting one another are some of Lawrence Woodmere Academy’s most precious values.

MLK celebrated

Martin Luther King Jr. Day will be celebrated on Monday, Jan. 16, one day after his birthday, Jan. 15. It is a federal holiday observed annually on the third Monday of January to commemorate King, the primary spokesman for nonviolence and the Civil Rights Movement, which mainly occurred in the 1960s and helped reduce racial discrimination in federal and state law. King, who was born in 1929, was assassinated in April 1968.

Twenty-five years later President Ronald Reagan signed the law that created the holiday. First observed in 1986, there were also some states that resisted observing the day, either naming it something else or joining it with other holidays. MLK Day was officially observed for the first time in all 50 states in 2000.

In 1963, King made his most famous speech “I Have A dream” at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. An excerpt from that address.

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

"I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.”

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. “