Yolanda King

CONTINUING

HIS PEACEFUL MISSION

By Gabi Klausner

Yolanda King brings a message of hope for a cure for racism

SING THE WORDS OF U her late father, Yolanda King set the tone for the message she came to deliver. "Either we learn to live together as brothers and sisters, or die together as fools," she said.

The cautious mingling in the crowd constituted a fitting foreground to the theme of the evening's speech — multi-cultural diversity. But more than this, Yolanda King, the eldest child of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., highlighted the hindering effects of shying away from embracing diversity in everyone's daily lives. "Nobody is completely free of racism," King said. "People want to belong, to feel secure and in control. They seek the 'normal' and reject the different seeing it as inferior, weird or ugly."

Born in Montgomery, Ala., two weeks before Rosa Parks triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which led to the civil rights movement in the South, Yolanda King has been in the midst of the struggle for civil rights her entire life.

King's delivery was dramatic, flowing and piercingly clear. "The horror of segregation and lynching seems like ancient history to us now," King said, "but because of the organized struggle, which emerged during the '50s and '60s, black, white, brown, yellow and red students can attend any university together ... that is, provided they can afford it."

King called to each person to act in his or her own way to curb racism. "She kind of geared it toward students; it's up to us to make a difference," sophomore Kelly Gleason said.

Turning to the larger picture, King called upon students to reassess one of the fundamentals of American culture — the image of the "Melting Pot." "But people don't melt," King said, "America is more like a mosaic. It's not the difference who is substandard or un-American, it is the standard which is wrong. We must focus on the difference until difference doesn't make a difference!" This elicited a burst of applause. "I thought she was really motivational. I just wish more people would have beer able to see her," senior Craig Sherrod said.

King ended her address with Maya Angelou's poem, "And Still I Rise." She captured the audience, as if holding them in her palm, carrying them high up with her as she described the fortitude of the soul in the face of humiliation.

(OLANDA KING, daughter of vlartin Luther King Jr., meets with tudents and signs autographs. 'tom Rosa Parks to Rodney King, ter message carried a non-racist seniment to a racially diverse audience.

Robb Hill