WashU community members gathered in Graham Chapel to honor the enduring legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Scott Zarider | Contributing Photographer)

At the 38th annual Danforth Campus Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration, audience members gathered in Graham Chapel to hear various speakers and choirs address themes of responsibility, resilience, and justice, in accordance with King’s lessons.

The event was co-hosted by senior Hussein Amuri, President of Student Union (SU), and sophomore Spencer Snipe, Co-President of ABS.

The event’s theme focused on responsibility, specifically King’s quote: “Ultimately, individual responsibility lies not in the external situation but in the internal response.”

Harvey Fields — Ph.D., Director for Missouri Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation and Associate Dean for Student Success — spent over 17 years at WashU. In his keynote speech, Fields explained that King delivered a version of his sermon that appealed to the public by emphasizing his commitment to the social gospel. 

“King’s message focused on individual responsibility, and he provided the impetus for his evolving and enlarging engagement in the movement for civil rights,” Fields said. “As any good traditional Baptist minister would do, Dr. King connected the message of personal responsibility to the personage of Jesus Christ.”

Fields acknowledged that President Donald Trump was being inaugurated on the same day. 

“However we may feel about the election of the president, it was an orderly transition of power,” Fields said. “That says something about democracy and that says something about the possibilities and opportunities we have to leverage democracy for our purposes, our goals, and our needs.”

Snipe also talked about inauguration, emphasizing the need to focus on King’s legacy.

“If anything, it makes everything we talked about that much more real and powerful, especially given the text messages that students have received in the last couple weeks telling them to go back to plantations,” Snipe said.

Snipe’s mention of texts is a reference to racist messages that Black students across the country received saying that they had been “selected to become a slave.”

Fields connected the messages to the hatred King received. 

“The threats that he received, the beatings he endured — [I hope] people realize he intentionally experienced those things and still came out with a perspective that what he was doing was for the good of humanity, and that becomes a really great testimony to him and his character,” Fields said.

Next, Snipe introduced the WashU Chamber Choir’s performance of “Wade in the Water,” explaining that King often used music to underscore the message of the Civil Rights Movement. Sophomore Reece Gray, a member of the Chamber Choir, noted the deep historical roots of the song.

“‘Wade in the Water’ references how the slaves would have to wade through water to avoid dogs catching their scent,” Gray said.

He added that he really appreciated being able to go to events like the commemoration.

“It’s really eye-opening to hear amazing speakers like Dr. Harvey and all these people from a different culture than my own,” Gray said.

Chancellor Andrew Martin asked the audience to reflect on individual and collective responsibility.

“If you read the sermon, you know that Dr. King encourages his listeners to take personal responsibility for their actions, to resist making excuses, and to transcend the circumstances that challenge them,” Martin said.

Martin also applied King’s lessons to WashU students.

“Every student at WashU has opportunities to explore their values and to understand more about their ‘capital R responsibility’ to the world and in doing so they will begin to take more ‘lowercase r responsibility’ for their actions,” Martin said.

Senior Assistant Dean of Advising Wilmetta Toliver-Diallo emphasized the need to also think of the larger civil rights movement and remaining injustices.

“We honor the thousands of nameless and faceless others whose sacrifice made the gains of the movement possible,” Toliver-Diallo said. “Today we are faced with new challenges. Our nation is polarized, our systems remain unjust, and there is unrest in many parts of the world and in our country, where women and children bear the brunt of the violence.”

Following Field’s keynote address, the Commemoration Committee presented two awards. Legacy Jackson received the “MLK Youth Service Award” in recognition of her volunteer work and the new creation of the community service organization Little Legacies. Dr. Flint Fowler received the “Rosa L. Parks Award for Meritorious Service to the Community” in recognition of her work transforming the lives of young people and their families in St. Louis.

The Rev. Callista Isabelle — Director for Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life — provided the event’s closing remarks, followed by the most prominent freedom song of the Civil Rights Movement, “We Shall Overcome.”

“This is our season to call out racism, homophobia, xenophobia, any force that threatens to dehumanize, because we are still striving to live out the dream that Dr. King put forth,” Isabelle said.