FAYETTEVILLE — Reading the words of Martin Luther King Jr. makes Austin Howard think about what it would have been like to experience the hatred and discrimination that black teenagers endured during the height of the civil-rights era.
Howard, who is a white sophomore at Bentonville High School, thinks about how segregation laws would have made it illegal for him to play basketball with one of his best friends, who is black.
“African-Americans didn’t do anything wrong,” Howard said. “It was the color of their skin.”
Howard, 15, was among 80 students from Bentonville High School who attended a march and vigil in Fayetteville on Monday in observance of the federal holiday for King, said Julie Griggs, an English teacher at Bentonville High. This was the second year members of thehigh school’s Black Student Union attended the annual event.
“I love learning more about my culture and what they did and the sacrifices of Martin Luther King Jr.,” said senior Donta Wright, 18, who is a member of the Black Student Union. “I would tell him, ‘thank you.’ The world has come so far. He affected quite a bit in the world.”
Griggs, a sophomore English teacher and faculty sponsor of the Black Student Union, opened the trip this year to other interested students, including sophomore English students who recently began reading a book King wrote. King wrote about the civil-rights movement in Birmingham, Ala., in the spring and summer of 1963 in WhyWe Can’t Wait. The book includes King’s 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
Sophomore English teachers at the high school are using King’s work toteach rhetoric and argumentative writing this quarter, said Heather Thompson, who teaches sophomore English. The book is considered an informational text, which has a greater emphasis in the Common Core State Standards. The standards are new to high schools this academic year and set goals for what students should learn in literacy and math.
King was a master of language, using every strategy of argument to communicate what he was fighting for, Griggs said.
“You realize why he’s an icon,” she said.
The study of Why We Can’t Wait will culminate in a writing project for which students will make an argument about whether the United States has an obligation to intervene in another country where human rights are violated, Griggs said.
The study has generated lots of discussion among students in Carmen Jones’ classes, so much that she sometimes has to stop the conversation because of time.
“They’re putting themselves in that time period, how they would feel,” Jones said.
Before the study of King’s book began, sophomore Clar Barron, 15, knew King inspired many people, and she was familiar with his famous, “I Have a Dream” speech. She is gaining a better understanding of why he was an inspirational person, she said.
“Because segregation was a big problem for a lot of people, he was one that steppedup,” Barron said. “He led everybody, gave them hope and told them not to give up.”
His push to end segregation has made her think about what she could do about bullying, she said. Barron said when her peers joke about other students who are sitting by themselves or dress differently, she could refuse to go along with their jokes.
“That could be a different form of people looking at people differently and judging them,” she said. “Not everybody will do it and go along with it.”
Howard said King and baseball player Jackie Robinson were calm and peaceful when they were faced with hatred and discrimination. They believed in what they were doing, and they changed the future, he said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/21/2014