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Though it took place well over a week after the actual holiday, the annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebrations were held the day after classes resumed.

Starting out the night was a candlelight vigil to remember King in the Wren courtyard, only a few hours after a snow shower. About 50 students, faculty and staff members endured the cold for a 45-minute ceremony sponsored by the campus chapters of the NAACP and Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. The vigil began with a speech from Sam Sadler, vice president for student affairs, reflecting on his life before, during and after King’s efforts to change society. Sadler noted that he was one of the few people at the ceremony alive when King was, and he reminded everyone in attendance that King’s work is not yet finished.

After the introduction, students in the NAACP gave readings about King and his legacy. Alpha Phi Alpha read the Omega Service, a memorial service for members of the fraternity, of which King was a member. At the end of the ceremony, the audience members proceeded to the University Center while holding their candles and singing the black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

Elaine R. Jones, attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, was introduced by Gene Nichol, president of the College. He had worked with her during his days as dean of the School of Law at the University of Chapel Hill-North Carolina. Nichol described Jones as a “path-breaker” and “better to listen to than anyone else in the world.” After the president’s introduction, junior Lesley Brown,
co-president of the campus NAACP chapter, presented Jones’ biography, noting that she was the first black woman to graduate from the University of Virginia School of Law and that she was a counsel on the case of Furman vs. Georgia, which abolished the death penalty in a number of states. Brown noted that a major part of Jones’ career was to change the composition of the court system. Jones also was involved in lobbying the Congress on civil-rights legislation and expanding the scope of the Legal Defense Fund to include environmental concerns and health care.

Jones focused her speech on the first three words of the preamble to the Constitution, “we the people,” and the ongoing struggle to expand that idea to all people. She said that while the writers of the Constitution represented the best minds of their day, they could never envisioned the world of today.
“All traditions aren’t good … [and enforcing traditions are] not always the right thing to do, not always the lawful thing to do,” said Jones. She noted that the Constitution referred only to white, male property owners as the applicable parts of “we the people.” Women were not included at all, and blacks were included in the Constitution as property and not as people.

In relating that to King, Jones explained that the goal of all Americans has been to change who is guaranteed constitutional rights and protection. “What has our job been since then? Putting all of us in ‘we the people,’” said Jones. Later she added, “In trying to fill in ‘we the people,’ what we have to understand is our strength comes from our diversity.”

Jones then described some of the injustices that have been at least partially corrected since the time the Constitution was originally written: an apology to the Japanese for internment camps, changes in the Census in the 1970s so all Hispanics were counted in it and Brown vs. the Board of Education. Jones especially emphasized the role of students in civil rights movement and their success at expanding rights to all.

The other legal changes Jones focused on were a series of anti-segregation laws: the creation of the civil rights division in the Department of Justice, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Jones argued that King was not someone who would have been expected to become a leader of the civil rights movement. He was an average middle-class African-American for his time; he attended elite universities and received his doctorate in divinity from Boston University. Jones said that what made him an exceptional leader was that he responded when the call for change came to him. “Martin was a man of his time. His moment came and he didn’t back away. He wasn’t silent,” said Jones.
 
“There’s a little Martin Luther King inside all of us,” said Jones. She used the example of educational equality as a means of encouraging people and noted that China has made it a mission to provide an equal education for all while the United States still argues about segregation, busing and property-tax redistribution and falls behind the world every day.

At the end of her speech, Jones was presented with a plaque from the Office of Multicultural Affairs to thank her for making a presentation at the College. Delta Sigma Theta sorority also sponsored a reception for Jones.