MLK Jr. Day speaker brings message home, specifically for area's young people

Keynote speaker Ric S. Sheffield addressed his remarks especially to young people at the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration in Wooster.

Sheffield, professor emeritus of sociology and legal studies at Kenyon College, spoke to an audience of about 150 attendees of all ages at First Presbyterian Church on Monday evening.

He wanted to make it clear racial discrimination isn't something that just happens "there" − other places − but also here in Ohio.

"Let the young people know we're not talking about something that happened there," or just in the South, Sheffield said. "We forget even rural Ohio had issues. Don't let (civil rights issues) be remote," believing they occurred in "another place, another time.

"It's about us today," Sheffield emphasized.

Using Dr. Seuss Sneetches to prove a point

Showing a slide of Dr. Seuss book characters called Sneetches, Sheffield noted an administrator in the Olentangy School District in the Columbus area tried to shut down discussion of the book because it made students think about racial discrimination.

Another slide pointed out, if Black children are old enough to experience racism, white children are old enough to learn about it.

"History should not be a stack of books," he said. "It should be much more personal."

Showing a picture of Linda Brown, Sheffield said how long he studied the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education without ever seeing a photo of the child behind it.

Sheffield's presentation was called "Building Bridges for Rural Diversity on the Shoulders of Empathy and Compassion."

"I want to talk about bridges," he said, in part to bring history to young people.

Ruby Bridges is 'part of the history of young people'

His topic made an easy segue to the story of Ruby Bridges, who experienced as a 6-year-old being escorted to a white school by U.S. marshals and is "part of the history of young people," he said.

Ruby Bridges Walk to School Day is celebrated Nov. 14 as a way "to commemorate the bravery of this little girl and what she had to endure," Sheffield said.

Sheffield also shared the Hillsboro Lincoln School story about a group of 53 Black mothers who for two years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision marched their children past a white school at which they were denied admission.

Deciding to direct his talk to the youth in the audience was based on the celebration's accompanying Martin Luther King essay contest in which  students from Green Middle School; Orrville Middle School and High School; Rittman Elementary and High School; St. Mary School, grades five through seven; Waynedale High School; and six schools from the Wooster City School District, along with homeschooled students, participated.

"I read what students were writing, and I wanted to talk about those things," Sheffield said.

Prompts for the student writers depended upon their age group, and the background for seventh-ninth grade students was the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education declaring state laws separating Black and white schoolchildren were unconstitutional.

Essay winner: People need to know about the hardships

First-place winner in that category, St. Mary School seventh-grader Maximilian Seifried, said in comments before the evening event the premise for his essay was "how Linda Brown helped end school segregation." People needed to know the hardships she had to face to get to school every day to change history, he said.

Seifried said he and his classmates researched the case for about a month. He noted the third-place winner, Kai Marullo, is a classmate and a friend.

One of the take-home messages from the celebration of King was the admonition to exercise the right to vote from Sheffield and from Wooster-Orrville NAACP President Juanita Greene, who said, "Anyone who says, 'My vote doesn't count' (is) wrong. The only way to change things is to vote."

Sheffield, who wrote "We Got By: A Black Family's Journey in the Heartland" about his own family history in rural Ohio, is working on a book about "the struggle for Black voting rights in the North," chronicling voting rights cases in Ohio between the late 1860s and the early 1870s.

In the face of war, poverty and homelessness, King's message is "more important now than ever before," said the Rev. Kevan Franklin, MLK Day committee chairperson.

Sarah Reith, executive director of OHuddle, accepted the evening's offering for the youth mentorship organization.

Mady Noble presented the essay award winners on behalf of essay contest readers, herself, Cheryl Goff, Scott Gregory, the Rev. Gary Friend and Barb Friedhoff.

Contest winners in grades 1-3 were first place, Ryker Cook, Cornerstone Elementary, grade 3; second place, Aayu Goudar, Kean Elementary, grade 3; and Liberty Lambert, Parkview Elementary, grade 3.

In grades 4-6, first place winner was Lucas Pindell, Edgewood Middle School, grade 6; second place, Nadiya Erb, Orrville Middle School, grade 5; and third place, Lauren Kubb, Parkview Elementary, grade 4.

Seventh-ninth-grade winners were first place, Maximilian Seifried, St. Mary School, grade 7; Karter Wayt, Orrville Middle School, grade 8; and third place, Kai Marullo, St. Mary School, grade 7.

In grades 10-12, first place winner was Rhys Florence-Smith, Wooster High School, grade 11; second place, Kaleb Wayt, Orrville High School, grade 11; and third place, Olivia Brown, Waynedale High School, grade 11.

"This is our future," Noble said of the students.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: MLK Day speaker brings message that racial discrimination is here, too