The 29th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Celebration week concludes at 6:30 tonight with “I, Too, Sing America,” in the Great Hall of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union. The event is named for a Langston Hughes poem and brings diverse campus groups together in song, dance and poetry.
For more information on today’s event contact Stanley Allen at stanjr2@email.unc.edu.
By ERIN WILTGEN
chh@heraldsun.com; 918-1035
CHAPEL HILL — The deep, gravely voice rose and fell amidst a lightning storm of camera flashes as Danny Glover, actor and producer, spoke to Thursday night’s audience — crowded, despite the rain — of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s evolution as a civil rights and eventually a human rights activist.
“The ideals of Dr. King are the ideals that have moved this country forward from its onset,” Glover said to a quietly assenting crowd.
Glover was the keynote speaker for the 29th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lecture in UNC Chapel Hill’s Memorial Hall Thursday night.
A candlelight vigil, which was supposed to be held before the speech as a time to reflect on King’s message, was canceled due to weather.
“This university first acknowledged Dr. King’s historical significance 29 years ago,” said Archie Ervin, UNC associate provost for diversity and multicultural affairs. “It’s important in a sense that it’s a commitment the university has made to recognize Dr. King’s life and work.”
The lecture, free to UNC students and the public, was the highlight of the weeklong 29th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Celebration week at UNC which ends tonight.
“A week is nice,” Glover told the crowd. “But we should be celebrating Martin Luther King every single day.”
Glover is the dean of African-American character actors and has made appearances in a host of films in the 30 years since his debut in “Escape from Alcatraz” in 1979, including the “Lethal Weapon” series, “The Color Purple” and guest appearances in the TV series “ER.”
But off the screen — and sometimes on it — Glover has dedicated his life to social advocacy, a commitment he began as a student at San Francisco State College by participating in a five-month student strike to establish the nation’s first ethnic studies department.
He has since become an advocate of economic justice, accessible health care and education, including work with the United Farm Workers and the Black AIDS Institute.
After a presentation of UNC’s 27th annual MLK scholarships, Glover took the stage to discuss how King’s life and legacy influence him to use his acting skills to promote and participate in social activism.
And that life of social activism and commitment to important national and international issues drove the Chancellor’s Committee for the Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Celebration to choose Glover as keynote speaker in the first place, Ervin said.
“He has quite a history of social activism that we thought was important for the world to know about,” Ervin said. “A number of opportunities have been offered this week for the community to come together in a forum of learning to talk about America’s quest for an egalitarian society.”
And Glover fit that theme quite nicely, speaking of Martin Luther King’s journey from striving to change segregation to trying to improve the structure itself.
“We must change the moral contents of this country,” Glover said. “We must change the country’s soul, not just integrate into it.”
And Glover has lived that message to its core, stretching from his days at San Francisco State College to his role as an ambassador for the United Nations Development Program.
“For someone of his particular notoriety to continue to do the kinds of things that he does generates a degree of admiration for him,” Ervin said. “He’s a person who has a life of luxury and ease who has chosen to be engaged in constructive ways in the social issues of our time.”
Such a commitment to improving the social problems still prevalent in America is exactly why taking time to remember King’s message is so important, Ervin said.
“I think it’s generally acknowledged that ignorance of one’s history is a very costly proposition,” he said. “Given the state of American society, we are still a work in progress in many, many ways. Many of those issues that Dr. King brought to the central agenda of the American conscious have yet to be realized.”
