This year's Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration at Carnegie Mellon came to a close with a keynote address and reception held in Rangos Hall of the University Center on Monday, January 15. Earlier in the day, the campus community engaged in many activities, including community service projects, an award ceremony honoring students' outstanding written works that had themes addressing discrimination, and an open discussion on the relevance of Dr. King's vision in the Pittsburgh locale.

As in previous years, the keynote featured speeches by a Carnegie Mellon student representative and an invited guest speaker. HSS senior Rosalyce Broadous-Brown provided the student commentary on the significance of the day's celebrations. The invited guest speaker was John Edgar Wideman, a son of Pittsburgh and professor of English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. An acclaimed author, twice-recipient of the PEN-Faulkner Award for fiction, and a MacArthur Award fellow, Wideman has penned articles for a litany of press outlets including The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and Esquire.

The proceedings for the keynote address began with a solemn rendition of "Lift Every Voice" and a brisk presentation of the Colors by the CMU & University of Pittsburgh ROTC Cadets. Karl Sjogren, HSS senior and Student Body President, introduced the student speaker after an invocation by Ted Hamilton, a pastor on Carnegie Mellon's Interfaith Council.

In her speech, Broadous-Brown noted that Dr. King is annually remembered, revered, and honored not simply for the end result of his struggle for civil rights and equality, but equally because he "simply kept going." His resilience in fighting for, and ultimately dying for, what he believed in is a reason for this annual memorial and it serves as inspiration for others who have kept his dream alive. Broadous-Brown cited her own personal journey here at Carnegie Mellon, from her work as president of SPIRIT, the prominent African-American student organization, to her off-campus work with high school youth, as stemming entirely from a desire to emulate and extend the vision of Dr. King. In closing, she urged listeners in the packed hall to engage in community service activities that can impact the lives of young people living in communities where opportunities and mentors are few.

"It is a scary world, and we must never underestimate the capacity of people to not see what they do not want to see."

With those words, John Edgar Wideman began his keynote address to the assembly of students, faculty and members of the Pittsburgh community. He elaborately explained why the issue of racial inequality still defines interactions and dominates discourse in America. He began by defining race as a hierarchical concept based on identifying "kinds" of people based on a set of values, using those distinctions as a basis of separate treatment and, eventually, evolving into a system where unfair treatment of the lower hierarchy is justified. The race issue persists, Wideman continued, because its historical beginnings have not been fully addressed and shades of racial inequality still provide benefit to some segments of society today.

"The distortion of the past does not allow us to redeem the present," Wideman continued.

He decried the lack of any mea culpa by government and political leaders since the passing of the civil rights era, and suggested that without such action there is little hope for closure on the issue of racial inequality.

In closing, Wideman read a collection of original short stories with themes ranging from the awareness of self, the notion of protest, and the death of Dr. King.
    
The President of the University, Jared L. Cohon, who had given a speech on "The State of Diversity at Carnegie Mellon" at an earlier event, provided closing remarks on the keynote ceremony and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday activities.

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