City observes 'day on'

At the Dr. Martin Luther King Birthday celebration Monday night at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, speakers recognized the legacy of King, but also emphasized that to truly fulfill his dream society needs even more work.\nMLK day is a different kind of holiday than others, said John Whikehart, chancellor of Ivy Tech Community College, and that is the reason it is his favorite.\n"Some (holidays) are centered around family, others about the contribution of groups and organizations, and some are just days we don't get mail and don't know why," he said. "But (MLK Day) is where we come together as a community for service and to pay tribute to the legacy of Dr. King."\nThe theme of Bloomington's MLK day celebration was "You can make a difference," and Whikehart said to remember that heroes like King were more than symbols: They took action.\n"All we have to do is pick up a pebble of change and throw it in a pond of complacency," he said.\nEdwardo Rhodes, vice chancellor for Academic Support and Diversity at IU, repeated this point and gave Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach For America, as an example for others to follow.\nKopp was an undergraduate concerned about the inequality in the educational system, Rhodes said. Everyone knew about this inequality, but Kopp was an individual who decided to do something about it.\nTeach For America is a program that sends college graduates to teach in inner-city schools for two years. It started out as an idea in her senior thesis, and has since grown into a $50 million program that sends 3,500 teachers to more than 1,000 schools.\n"Not bad for one idea, for an undergraduate who was strongly motivated," Rhodes said. "Did Wendy Kopp make a difference? I say yes, and so can we all."\nAll across Bloomington people were working to make a difference as well. MLK Day is known as "A day on, not a day off," and many Bloomington residents fulfilled that mission.\nVolunteers cleaned at Girls Inc. Others repaired houses for Habitat for Humanity or provided entertainment to inmates at the Wabash Valley Correctional Center.\n"We don't have to look far to find those who need our help," Whikehart said.\nMost of the night was a musical celebration of the life of King. One performer said music was a source of strength for King and much of the civil rights movement. \nKeeping with the musical theme, the winner of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Award was the director of the IU African American Choral Ensemble James Mumford.\nMumford was an "ambassador of racial equality" as the head of the ensemble, Mayor Mark Kruzan said. The ensemble, along with members of the Bloomington Unitarian Universalist Church, went to the Wabash Valley Correctional Center and sang to the inmates Monday.\nMumford is also an educator and was inducted into the IU prestigious Faculty Colloquium on Excellence in Teaching Program.\nIn his acceptance speech Mumford expressed one of the lessons he learned from King. "I am human," he said. "So anything human is not foreign to me"