Fifty students, faculty and staff took part Monday in a “Day of Service” in Greensboro, N.C., to honor the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Members of the Elon University campus community commemorated the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday morning through a variety of service activities in Greensboro hosted by a North Carolina volunteer organization.
The Volunteer Center of Greensboro’s Martin Luther King Jr. “Day of Service” in the Four Seasons Town Centre welcomed hundreds of local students, ranging in age from middle school through college, who on the first floor of the mall packed literacy and snack kits for elementary schools.
Just a quick ride up a nearby escalator saw other crowds of young people handmaking Valentine’s Day cards for area first responders.
“I had a day off from school and I thought, ‘why not?’” said Elon junior Jessica Jones, a sport and event management major from Atlanta working with friends on the first responder Valentine’s Day cards. “This is a way to give back to the community.”
The Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement led efforts at Elon to make service a special part of the federal holiday. The Beloved Community Day of Service, part of a larger campus celebration this month to commemorate King’s legacy, is an annual tradition that this week featured efforts by 50 students, faculty and staff.
The service projects were aimed in part at groups that King would have considered disadvantaged. In the last years of his life, King had broadened his message of social justice to include not only African Americans denied civil rights, but people of all backgrounds confronting poverty.
“He wasn’t working just for racial equality,” said Carla Fullwood, associate director of the Center for Race, Ethnicity & Diversity Education. “I hope that students realize Dr. King was advocating for human rights across all identities.”
The 2015 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beloved Community Celebration was organized by the Center for Race, Ethnicity & Diversity Education, Elon Teaching Fellows, the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement, the Black Cultural Society, the National Panhellenic Council, DEEP, the Office of Student Activities and the Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life.
For Elon students who took part in the service projects, volunteering their time on a federal holiday to celebrate a civil rights leader just made sense.
“Volunteering is a better use of our time than sleeping in,” said sophomore Ben Bridges, an anthropology major from Charlotte, N.C. Bridges was one of several Honors Program scholars at the event. “It’s also nice to do something as a group. There’s more of a purpose when people share the experience.”
Another Elon student put it more succinctly: “With it being Martin Luther King Jr. Day, you’d feel like a bum not going out and doing anything,” said senior Andre Davis, a sport and event management major from Bunn, N.C.