Brown County to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. by revisiting the mountaintop

GREEN BAY - The day before he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his ground-breaking sermon "I've Been to the Mountaintop" at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 3, 1968.

His speech scaled humanity's own Everest, stretching from Ancient Egypt to Birmingham, Alabama, conferring with figures from Plato to Lincoln, underscoring social movements from the Emancipation Proclamation to the Memphis sanitation strike, the protest that brought him back to Tennessee. In the speech, King expressed his intentions to live a long, prosperous life. He looked ahead from the mountaintop with an eye aimed at the second half of the 20th century.

Although he was killed the next day, the mountaintop he touched remains for others to reach. And it's part of the theme of the 28th annual Brown County Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration from 10:30 a.m.-noon Saturday at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, 2740 W. Mason St.

"If you think about the physical mountaintop, you think about all the things climbers have to go through," said Ingrid Parker Hill, a Green Bay resident who has been on the Brown County Martin Luther King Jr. Committee on and off for about 15 years. "They have to deal with the weather, the elements, they have to deal with their minds. But when we see the figurative mountaintop that Dr. King was thinking about, we have challenges and opportunities there as well."

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When Hill considers the mountaintop, she thinks about what it means to reach one's full potential. Achieving that fullness requires a whole circle of influences, Hill said, and it's a height she hopes to see in her lifetime.

The full theme, "Reaching the mountaintop: How do we get there?" is as much a reflection as a prompt for action. For Sara Lam, a member of the Brown County Martin Luther King Jr. Committee and vice present of NWTC's diversity, equity and inclusion program, the theme reminds us that we have a ways to go before we achieve "the type of community that Dr. King envisioned."

"Many forms of racial injustice that Dr. King organized around persist today. We must continue to work for change in our social systems, from housing to education to criminal justice," Lam said.

To attain this, it will take ordinary people working together, Lam said, which is part of why Saturday's celebrations invite Brown County K-12 students to participate in a tiered poster essay contest, recognize a Brown County educator who helps realize King's vision and, for the first time, name the next recipient of the Ebiere “Juliet” Cole Award.

Cole, whom Hill surprised with the award named after her last year, is a "living legend," Hill said when she presented the award. This year, the committee intends to award another inimitable member of the community who reflects King's message for social change.

A day to 'reexamine social inequities'

When Hill moved to Green Bay from Chicago in 1999, she felt out of place while shopping for groceries and going to the mall. She counted herself among one of the only Black people she'd typically see in supermarkets and other public places.

Sometimes it's hard to see progress in real time, but Hill said she's noticed a growth in diversity over the last two decades — not just while shopping, but also in leadership and professions across the county.

"There are now more people who look like me who are part of this community," Hill said. "And if they're here, there's something keeping them here."

Hill said she recognizes that some of the Black people living in Brown County don't have the means to relocate, but all the more reason to ensure that everyone feels like they're part of the community. She doesn't want anybody else to feel like an outsider as they run errands in their own town.

More diversity is a "great thing for Brown County," Hill said. Indeed, it's been documented that cultural diversity improves the quality of life in communities, with different perspectives and knowledge sets stimulating innovation and creativity — but whether that goes beyond a theoretical idea is up to people in any given community taking on those challenges.

Lam said it will require more than a single day, week or month in a given year to bring about racial justice, but Martin Luther King Jr. Day can help us "to reexamine systemic inequities and reaffirm our commitment to building a more inclusive and just society."

"It’s also important that we sustain that work every day," Lam said.

Helping students see the world from above

The mountaintop, Hill said, is symbolic for its generational feat. She sees herself as a fellow climber alongside her children and grandchildren — who identify as Black and multiracial — and sometimes wonders if she'll ever meet its peak.

"I will say I'm hopeful to reach the mountaintop over the course of my lifetime, but if I don't see that, I'm hoping that I have helped enough people climb with me, or bring them along, pull them up, that they will be able to get to that," Hill said. "But once you get to the peak, you're not done. It's not complete. You might rest for a minute, but you can't rest on your laurels."

Students from Brown County's K-12 schools were recently invited to interpret what the mountaintop means to them, and their entries will now be considered for the committee's various poster essay contests. The awards have been divided into four categories: kindergarten to third grades, fourth to sixth grades, seventh to ninth grades and 10th to 12th grades.

Winners in each grade entry level will be awarded a touchscreen Chromebook, a football, a statue of Martin Luther King Jr., a book about him, and a certificate. Second-place winners will receive some of the same items, but instead of a football, they'll win a $40 Amazon gift card. Third-place winners will get the Chromebook, statue, book and certificate, and honorable mentions will get a $25 Barnes and Noble gift card.

Additionally, the winning entries will be on display at the Neville Public Museum from Jan. 21 through March 5.

"We really want students to see the theme as relevant to them, and not just for the older students," Hill said. "Part of how we reach the mountaintop is getting all of our kids to feel connected to King's speech and his lessons."

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Natalie Eilbert covers mental health issues for USA TODAY NETWORK-Central Wisconsin. She welcomes story tips and feedback. You can reach her at neilbert@gannett.com or view her Twitter profile at @natalie_eilbert. If you or someone you know is dealing with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text "Hopeline" to the National Crisis Text Line at 741-741.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: 28th annual Brown County Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration: mountaintop