MLK Day Celebration

The Colom Foundation, in association with the Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Committee, wanted to broaden the impact of Martin Luther King Day in the community. Too often, celebrations have taken on an exclusionary tone which is not in keeping with Dr. King's message. The precepts that he espoused and lived belong to all races, and the Foundation wanted to illustrate what Dr. King was really all about.

In order to further this effort, the Foundation sponsored an appearance by author and historian Tim Tyson on Martin Luther King Day. Tyson, a professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, is the author of the civil rights-era memoir Blood Done Sign My Name, which chronicles the killing of a black war veteran at the hands of Klansman in Oxford, North Carolina, when Tyson was 11. Tyson's father, a Methodist minister, attempted to persuade his congregation to reach across racial lines to heal the community's bitter wounds, but was regarded as a traitor by whites and forced to leave town.

Read the text of Tyson's speech.

See press clippings from the event.