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Martin Luther King Jr. day
was celebrated on Monday,
January 16, 2006. Mont Alto
Students decided to take this
day and serve in dedication to
Dr. King. They attended the
YMCA in Wayneborough, PA
since there were not any
academic classes in
remembrance of Dr, King.
They found themselves sharing
the same cause of service with
other elementary level
schoolchildren.
According to Activities
Coordinator Julie DeMoss
they had “so much fun playing
bingo, basketball, and coloring
sheets that represented what Dr.
Martin Luther King did.”
Mont alto Sophomore Bub
Stokes “felt more than happy
to wake up so early and share
the great vision of Dr. King
with the kids” and “looks
forward to coordinating
another activity with the kids
through the Volunteer Club.”
Stokes felt “like an older
brother who can never lose to
anyone in Basketball.”
Mont Alto Black Student
Union President Treasure
Kitchen thought, “the day
could not go any better.” and
“the day of service was good
for an awareness of what Dr.
King was really all about.”
Kitchen states “Dr. King was
about public service and
making our surroundings a
better place for us to enjoy.”
Black Student Union Treasurer
Indera Nero felt “good and
happy about the outcome of
being with the kids” and “she
was surprised on how educated
the kids were about the day.”
The day ended by a
ceremony dedicated to Dr.
King in the Wiestling Student
Center. There was a program
consisted of many reflections
of Dr. King. These reflections
followed by the Black National
Anthem sang by James Walton
“Lift Every Voice and Sing”
and reflections in poetry
brought forward by Mont Alto
Freshman Antonia Houston.
This was continued by a
PowerPoint slide show of the
many things that Dr. King has
done. Black Student Union
Vice President Lenesha Brown
“looks forward to future days
of service.
institution of Atlanta from
which both his father and
grandfather had been
graduated. After three years of
theological study at Crozer
Theological Seminary in
Pennsylvania where he was
elected president of a
worker for civil rights for
members of his race, King was,
by this time, a member of the
executive committee of the
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored
People, the leading
organization. of its kind in the
According to the Nobel
Prize.org Dr. Martin Luther
King was born Michael Luther
King, Jr., but later had his
name changed to Martin. His
grandfather began the family’s
long tenure as pastors of the
Ebenezer Baptist Church in
Atlanta, serving from 1914 to
1931; his father has served from
then until the present, and from
1960 until his death Martin
Luther acted as co-pastor.
Martin Luther attended
segregated public schools in
Georgia, graduating from high
school at the age of fifteen; he
received the B. A. degree in
1948 from Morehouse College,
a distinguished Negro
predominantly white senior
class, he was awarded the B.D.
in 1951. With a fellowship won
at Crozer, he enrolled in
graduate studies at Boston
University, completing his
residence for the doctorate in
1953 and receiving the degree
in 1955 In Boston he met and
married Coretta Scott, a young
woman of uncommon
intellectual and artistic
attainments. Two sons and
two daughters were born into
the family.
In 1954, Martin Luther
King accepted the pastorale of
the Dexter Avenue Baptist
Church in Montgomery,
Alabama. Always a strong
nation. He was ready, then,
early in December, 1955, to
accept the leadership of the
first great Negro nonviolent
demonstration of
contemporary times in the
United States, the bus boycott
described by Gunnar Jahn in
his presentation speech in
honor of the laureate. The
boycott lasted 382 days. On
December 21, 1956, after the
Supreme Court of the United
States had declared
unconstitutional the laws
requiring segregation on
buses, Negroes and whites
rode the buses as equals.
During these days of boycott,
King was arrested, his home
was bombed, he was subjected
to personal abuse, but at the
same time he emerged as a
Negro leader of the first rank.
In 1957 he was elected
president of the Southern
Christian ‘Leadership
Conference, an organization
formed to provide new
leadership for the now
burgeoning civil rights
movement. The ideals for this
organization he took from
Christianity; its operational
techniques from Gandhi. In the
eleven-year period between
1957 and 1968, King traveled
over six million miles and
spoke over twenty-five hundred
times, appearing wherever there
was injustice, protest, and
action; and meanwhile he
wrote five books as well as
numerous articles. In these
years, he led a massive protest
in Birmingham, Alabama, that
caught the attention of the
entire world, providing what he
called a coalition of conscience.
and inspiring his “Letter from
a Birmingham Jail”, a
manifesto of the Negro
revolution; he planned the
drives in Alabama for the
registration of Negroes as
voters; he directed the peaceful
march on Washington, D.C., of
250,000 people to whom he
delivered his address, “1 Have a
Dream.”
At the age of thirty-five,
Martin Luther King, Jr., was
the youngest man to have
received the Nobel Peace Prize.
When notified of his selection,
he announced that he would
turn over the prize money of
$54,123 to the furtherance of
the civil rights movement.
On the evening of April 4,
1968, while standing on the
balcony of his motel room in
Memphis, Tennessee, where he
was to lead a protest march in
sympathy with striking garbage
workers of that city, he was
assassinated.