Community High School’s MLK Assembly
On Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013, Community High students and guest speakers gathered in Saint Andrew’s church to recognize and appreciate Martin Luther King Jr Day. Several students read poems they had written by famous speakers, including Eric Bayless-Hall, who opened up the performances at the beginning of the assembly. Besides poetry, other acts took turns on the stage. Each was greeted with loud applause from Community High students and staff seated in the audience taken in by the scene.
Robbie Stephens performed a lyrical dance and was an excellent addition to the various speeches, poetry and even rap. Guest speaker Jamall Bufford brought the assembly to an end by sharing a “piece”, as he calls it, and having a rap battle with Community High students and faculty.
Bufford grew up in Ann Arbor and is an alumnus of Huron High school. In his presentation at St. Andrew church, he mentioned how as a teen growing up in Ann Arbor, he had a hard road ahead of him to become a rapper. Martin Luther King’s speech helped him to graduate college and begin living his dream of being a rapper. He has traveled around the world performing and can use this career to support himself today. As he puts it, “I started out just mimicking my favorite rappers, and then I started to develop my own voice as I got older. I learned what I wanted to say and what I wanted to talk about.” Bufford talked about how Martin Luther King was his idol, and even though no one would ever be able to do anything as great as King did as one person, the community can still work together to take some of the steps that Martin Luther King took to make a difference.
Martin Luther King Day is on Monday, Jan. 21. All of the Ann Arbor public schools get the day off to celebrate King’s work and excellency. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day falls on the third Monday in January, to commemorate King’s Jan. 15th birthday. The purpose of the assemblies that are held is to appreciate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s protesting against racial discrimination and to honor what he has done for society, as well as put a focus on how his life impacts all of our lives today.
To see photos of Community High’s Martin Luther King Day assembly, follow the below link to the Communicator’s Fickr album http://www.flickr.com/photos/
