“Ain’t I allowed to fulfill Martin’s dream? You know, the one where I might actually be considered a human being?” asked Shekinah Stanton during her performance. The audience murmured and snapped their fingers approvingly.
Stanton was one of four spoken word poets to perform at Monday’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration. Participants gathered at East High School for a brief rally before marching along 1300 East to Kingsbury Hall, concluding with a screening of King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.
The annual march and rally represents the collaboration of several U offices and local organizations, including the Salt Lake City School District, b Salt Lake City Police Department and several faith groups. The university will continue to celebrate King throughout the week in a series of events.
Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski spoke at the rally, extolling both the impact of King’s legacy and the importance of building upon his work, calling activism “a tool we must never let go of.”
“As mayor, I don’t ever want the activists to stop speaking out,” Biskupski said. “I need to hear your voice. The community needs to hear your voice.”
The program also included a reading of Rabbi Uri Miller’s “Prayer For Our Country,” offered at the March on Washington in 1963 by local clergy.
The bulk of the rally’s programming was artistic, including both music and spoken word. Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin, a singer and academic adviser for the U, performed an a capella rendition of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” a song once adopted by the NAACP as the “Black National Anthem.” Though Darby-Duffin announced she would only sing the first verse (having forgotten the words to the rest of it), members of the crowd began to sing along with her, carrying her into the second verse. More joined in after searching for the lyrics on their cell phones. In the end, Darby-Duffin sang all three verses, accompanied by an audience of 200.
In addition to Stanton, Monday’s rally featured three other slam poets, who used both statistical information and personal anecdotes to paint a picture of the plight faced by black Americans today.
“You say it’s culture?” rapped U junior Sabrina Abdalla after listing schooling and incarceration statistics, “that my little brothers are six times more likely to be incarcerated than yours? That every 28 hours in this country a black man is shot? Hell, no, that ain’t culture. That is not black culture.”
“It really claws at you,” SLCC student Mahamoud Samatar said of the poetry. “Honestly, with all that’s going on these days, seeing that … well, it’s touching.”
Salt Lake City School District assistant superintendent Kathleen Christy said the event fostered valuable cross-cultural collaboration.
“It’s a very good celebration for our students and our city,” Christy said. “My goal would be for it to be city-wide. I’d like for us to march down State Street or something one day.”
@allisonoctober