Martin Luther King celebration in Olathe grows with city’s diversity

As Olathe has become more racially and culturally diverse, its Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration has become more popular. Starting 16 years ago with a dozen essay-contest entrants, this year more than 4,000 students wrote about King’s legacy.

Nearly 500 people gathered Sunday at the new Olathe Conference Center, which adjoins the Embassy Suites Hotel at the intersection of Kansas 10 and Ridgeview Road, to hear the winners read their essays, plus inspirational music and a keynote address by Ryan Jones, an educator and lead tour guide at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn.

The theme of this year’s Olathe celebration was “Love Illuminates Life,” adapted from a saying by King. Olathe public school students were invited to expound upon that theme in writing, art or multi-media presentations. Winners were announced in each category at both the middle- and high-school levels.

The Olathe Human Relations Commission, a city-appointed board of 11 members, organized the contests and the celebration, with financial support from local sponsors.

After a welcome from Mayor Michael Copeland, U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder of Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District offered remarks, recalling his 2015 visit to Selma, Ala., the site of one of King’s most famous actions, a series of marches demanding voting rights for African-Americans.

Yoder described a “surreal” moment as he stood at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where marchers were attacked by Alabama State Troopers on the so-called “Bloody Sunday” of March 7, 1965.

“I could feel the hatred,” Yoder said. “I could imagine how terrifying that march was 50 years ago as that nonviolent movement ran into hatred and bigotry.”

Yoder noted, however, that as Americans instinctively recoiled from the televised scenes of violence from that day, “minds began to be changed.”

“We’ve come a long way,” he said, “but we are all making a journey that will never be complete, and the work is never ending as long as prejudice continues. It’s our mission today, and we are inspired to carry on … as each day we inch closer to the promised land.”

Jones offered a brief history of the civil rights movement and how King came to lead it.

The church, he said, came to be the home of the movement because “activists had to have somewhere to gather” and other places were segregated.

He spoke of the legal milestones like the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He mentioned famous actions King led, including the 1955 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott; the 1963 March on Washington and the series of marches from Selma to Mongtomery in 1965.

The National Civil Rights Museum is located at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where King was staying when he was assassinated in 1968. The museum, Jones said, “tells stories of triumph and tragedy, allowing citizens from all over the world to see the nature of the resistance” movement King led.

He said that a sculpture at the museum depicts a mass of people “struggling to get to the top.”

It’s a reminder, Jones said, that “we have so much more to do to achieve a more perfect union.”

Human Rights Commission Chairwoman Vivian Avery said she was pleased and moved to see how the MLK celebration has grown.

“It’s growing because people see we are all for diversity and equality out here, and we want to make sure people are treated with respect,” she said.

This story was originally published January 21, 2016 at 2:52 PM with the headline "Martin Luther King celebration in Olathe grows with city’s diversity."