Trojans find inspiration and hope celebrating birthday legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

USC Associate Dean for Religious and Spiritual Life the Rev. Brandon Harris reminded attendees at a campus celebration of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday that the federal holiday honoring the late civil rights leader is “a day about liberation and dismantling oppression.”

“Our work as teachers, our work as staff, our work as students is to fight until the last vestiges of oppression and injustice in this nation fall apart,” Harris said during his keynote address at the lunchtime event Wednesday presented by USC Black Staff and Faculty Caucus.

“Every time you step on this campus, every time you walk into a classroom, every time you step into a meeting, remember that this work is sacred work,” he said. “We cannot afford to get tired now.”

Harris spoke with passion about the challenges that persist in the nation and the world when it comes to race, equality and civil rights. He told the audience of more than 50 students, faculty and staff members inside the Ronald Tutor Campus Center Forum that King would not have lost hope — and neither can they.

“It is easy for us to resign to helplessness or to callousness, to bitterness or to throw our hands in the air and say that we will not fight for justice,” Harris said. “But I think we are drawn to a deeper work, and that is the work of our ancestors.”

Harris called on attendees to continue creating on campus “places of resilience and freedom to remind ourselves that no matter what the world around us may say … there is a place where your value and your humanity and your dignity and your existence is lifted up.”

USC celebrates MLK: Speaking and singing out

Graduate student Derrick Pough Jr. of the USC Thornton School of Music opened the lunchtime event with a soaring rendition of the song “Stand Up” from the biographical film Harriet, which starred Cynthia Erivo as abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

The event was organized by USC Black Staff and Faculty Caucus President Cynthia Brass. She has worked at the university for 32 years and planned many of the previous King celebrations, which date back more than four decades at USC.

Brass introduced a slideshow featuring photos and famous quotes by King, including one from his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech: “The beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.”

Attendees were given the opportunity to share their feelings about King and his legacy. Undergraduate Alexandria Gee of the USC School of Dramatic Arts was among those who spoke, offering a plea for unity.

“I feel like my community has been divided because [some of us] have had more opportunities,” Gee said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not still Black. So, I hope that one day we can still come together.”

Danielle West, multicultural coordinator for USC Student Equity and Inclusion Programs, exhorted the students to maintain their sense of history.

“That’s where our strength stems from,” West said. “That’s where our perseverance comes from.”

Fight for MLK Day

The campaign for a federal holiday celebrating King began soon after his assassination in 1968. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year.

But it took 17 years for official observance of the holiday to reach all 50 states. Some states resisted the holiday and gave it alternative names or combined it with other holidays.

During her remarks at the event, Corliss Bennett, who served for 17 years as director of USC’s Center for Black Cultural and Student Affairs, spoke of the struggle to achieve the federal holiday honoring King, whose birthday is on Jan. 15.

Bennett recited some of the lyrics to Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday” song, which he wrote and recorded in 1980 to help with the effort for a King holiday:

   “There ought to be a time
That we can set aside
To show just how much we love you
And I’m sure you would agree
What could fit more perfectly
Than to have a world party on the day you came to be.”

“We get the holiday off, and folks might just be thinking, ‘Oh, we get a day off,’” Bennett said. “They might not fully understand what we went through — we as a people, we as a society — to even get a holiday.”