Rice remembers a civil rights king

Rice remembers a civil rights king
…………………………………………………………………

BY DANA BENSON
Special to the Rice News

Rice students,
staff and faculty celebrated the life of Martin Luther King
Jr. at a candlelight vigil held Jan. 20.

They harkened
back to 1963 through a rendition of King’s “I
Have a Dream” speech and then were brought back to
the present with a talk by former military leader and astronaut
Charles Bolden Jr., who fulfilled his own dreams, thanks
to civil rights leaders like King.

The eighth annual
candlelight vigil, sponsored by the Black Student Association
(BSA), began in front of Fondren Library with a reading
of King’s famous speech by Rice junior Jonathan Chism,
who also is an ordained minister. His voice was powerful
as he recited the speech that originally was delivered on
the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington:

“I have
a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out
the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths
to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia
the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners
will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi,
a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and
oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom
and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one
day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Singing “We
Shall Overcome,” members of the campus community then
proceeded to the Rice Chapel to hear selections from the
Rice choir Melodious Voices of Praise and remarks from members
of the BSA and from Bolden.

Megan Francis,
vice president of the BSA, noted that on King’s birthday,
the nation celebrates the life and legacy of a man who brought
hope and healing to America. But it also celebrates Rosa
Parks, Medgar Evers, the Little Rock Nine, Malcolm X, the
Freedom Riders, Angela Davis, Jackie Robinson and others
who fought for civil rights, she said.

Growing up in
Columbia, S.C., retired Maj. Gen. Charles Bolden was familiar
with the fight for civil rights. Rice history professor
Ed Cox recalled that Bolden had told him about his dreams
of being a pilot. “He told me, ‘It was not the
time for black kids in South Carolina to have those dreams,
but I never gave up my dream of flying,’” Cox
recounted.

Bolden graduated
in 1968 from the U.S. Naval Academy with a bachelor of science
degree. He accepted a commission with the U.S. Marine Corps,
and in 1972 and ’73 he flew more than 100 combat missions
in Vietnam. He held various assignments with the Marine
Corps upon his return from the war, and then in 1979 he
graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. He was
selected as a NASA astronaut a year later, and flew four
space missions, including piloting a 1990 mission to deploy
the Hubble Space Telescope and commanding a 1992 Space Laboratory
mission dedicated to NASA’s “Mission to Planet
Earth.”

Bolden geared
his talk toward Rice students, reminding them of another
famous speech by King, “The Drum Major Instinct,”
which King delivered shortly before his death in 1968. In
that speech, King asked not to be remembered for his degrees
or for his Nobel Prize, but for serving his fellow man.

“The bottom
line,” he said, “is that before you can lead,
you must serve. I want to remind you that we must be active
servers.”

Bolden also implored
the students in the audience to be “purveyors of hope.”

“Hope is
a very, very important aspect of life,” he said. “It
keeps people alive, and it makes the downtrodden pick themselves
up. When you leave campus, you must be a purveyor of hope
because there are many people who see no hope. Our jails
and prisons are filled with people who see no hope.”

He added that
when students find themselves down, they should remember
the words sung by the members of the Melodious Voices of
Praise, “I believe I can make it,” which the choir
sang in a song called “I Gotta Believe.”

Bolden said that
he always will consider himself a Marine, even though he
is now retired, and took the opportunity in his talk to
mention the possibility of the United States going to war
with Iraq. If the United States does become an “aggressive
nation,” Bolden asked the audience “to think about
the soldiers and pray for them, and when it’s over,
do not slight them. Dr. King would probably tell you the
same thing.”

In closing, Bolden
advised the audience to “go away from this celebration
tonight knowing you can make a difference and instill hope
in other people.”

“I enjoin
you to leave here pledging to become activists, to become
doers,” he said.