DR. FRED McELROY speaks to a crowded room of multi-racial students about the importance of researching all aspects of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Santiago Flore
CHAMP ON OF THE TRUTH By Mike Nichols OSPONSORED BY THE
Students remember Martin Luther King Jr., a man with flaws, determination and a true heart 24 CALENDAR
Black Culture Center's advisory board and AfroAmerican Affairs, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s, birthday celebration helped a crowd of African Americans and whites better understand the civil rights leader. It also ushered people in from subzero temperatures to remember King in a series of films that ran at the Black Culture Center. Starting at 10 a.m., students filtered in and out to watch documentaries on the life of King. Dr. Fred McElroy, associate professor of Afro-American Studies, delivered an evening
lecture that brought not only a message of the civil rights leader, but also one of truth, love and the importance of education on this holiday. "I am a teacher," McElroy said, "and as a teacher, I urge all of us to honor Martin Luther King by visiting the library." McElroy said to honor King is to research him. By merely sanctifying King one day a year, he said, we are not truly honoring him as a man. "We must tell the truth about his life and legacy," McElroy said. "We must approach learning about Dr. King with a tough mind and
a tender heart." King's temper, eating habits and his extramarital affairs were a fey of the examples McElroy used to paint the picture of King as a human being. "This was no black Jesus, this was a human being, and the greatness of the man is that despite his human foibles, he achieved what he achieved," McElroy said. He said these shortcomings mad, King's accomplishments all the greater. McElroy then applied the ideology of truth to how we celebrate this day. "A nation that celebrates the Fourth of July every year proclaiming liberty, and
