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Galesburg’s Knox College applies MLK’s legacy to unsettled world

There’s meaning in the music at Knox College on Monday. The choir finds a way to link Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to today’s unsettled world. The G...

There's meaning in the music at Knox College on Monday.

The choir finds a way to link Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to today's unsettled world.

The Galesburg campus hosted King Day 2016 at its Winter Term Convocation.

It's also a search for meaning from recent violence around the country.

The Black Lives Matter movement offers a timely connection to MLK.

Senior Caitlin Watts, 21, joins other students to explore contemporary uncertainty through poetry.

"I think it definitely reinforces Martin Luther King's words because this was the theme of the whole civil rights movement," she said.

That challenge of change reaches to the current presidential campaign.

The reality of terrorism and rhetoric of racism become a modern equivalent of 1960's unrest.

"Dr. King's human rights movement and quest for social justice could not be more relevant," said Dr. Konrad Hamilton.

Dr. Hamilton says that most Americans want to live together peacefully.

Politicians, he adds, should take a page from MLK and learn to work together.

"As Americans, we always have a choice," Dr. Hamilton said.  "We can decide whether we're going down the path of divisiveness, or hopefully go down Martin Luther King's path."

During President Obama's State of the Union Address and the Republican response, there's a call to counter racial or religious scapegoating with acceptance.

"We have to affirm over and over again that we're all Americans," said Dr. Hamilton.  "We're all in this together."

Lessons from MLK Day that live on at Knox College.

"It's very important to me," Watts concluded.  "It's very important to our nation to move forward."

 

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