LEGACY OF SERVICE

ECU events help students honor Martin Luther King Jr.

A day off from classes is normally a welcomed invitation to sleep in and take it easy, but on Monday, Jan. 21, hundreds of East Carolina University students braved an early morning and freezing temperatures to give back to the community.

ECU’s annual participation in the Martin Luther King Jr. National Day of Service gives students, faculty and staff an opportunity to volunteer and celebrate King’s legacy. Nearly 300 students participated at 15 community partner sites.

Students organize seed packets at the Making Pitt Fit Community Garden.

“I’ve always been told this is a day on, not a day off because Dr. King gave so much to us, so I want to give back,” said Karis Adams, a communications major and president of ECU’s Black Law Professional Organization.

Adams and several friends joined volunteers at First Christian Church in Greenville to pack more than 25,000 meals for Rise Against Hunger. Students worked at the Making Pitt Fit Community Garden sorting seed packets, and others served meals at the Community Crossroads Center, which provides housing and resources to the area’s homeless population.

Students started the day on campus at 9:30 a.m. Monday and returned after their volunteer shifts to reflect on the day.

Maya Washington, a political science major from Fayetteville, said she felt it was her moral obligation to give back. “Dr. King set the example for us, so we are to follow in his footsteps.”

Students also volunteered at the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina, MacGregor Downs Health & Rehabilitation Center, the Ronald McDonald House, River Park North, Making Pitt Fit & Greenville Community Garden, the McConnell-Raab Hope Lodge, Building Hope, Literacy Volunteers of Pitt County, RHA Health Services, Boys & Girls Club, Rocking Horse Ranch, and Brookdale Assisted Living Center. The event was sponsored by ECU’s Center for Leadership and Civic Engagement and the Ledonia Wright Cultural Center.

In addition to the National Day of Service, the Ledonia Wright Cultural Center’s 2019 MLK Celebration speaker, Payton Head, talked to ECU community members Thursday night in the student center. His talk was titled, “Where do we go from here: chaos or community?”

“I think chaos builds community,” he said. “Even in all this chaos, we can build a community together, and that’s the only way we’re going to be able to move forward. You don’t have a movement unless people move.”

Head was president of the Missouri Students Association at the University of Missouri in Columbia in 2015. Tensions were high following the 2014 killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, about 100 miles away. Those tensions escalated, and Head gained national prominence following his Sept. 12, 2015, Facebook post that detailed his own run-ins on or near campus with racial and homophobic slurs.

Other racially charged events followed, and soon the campus was at the center of a national – if not international – racial debate. A hunger striker and the Missouri football team that said it would boycott its next game unless the Missouri system president, Tim Wolfe, resigned brought more attention. On Nov. 9, 2015, Wolfe did resign, and R. Bowen Loftin, chancellor of the Columbia campus, also announced he was stepping down. 

Head, a Chicago native, is now a graduate student at the University of Chicago and a globally known activist who speaks on the need to disrupt the status quo and build communities to address and solve problems.

Alyssa Cadavid, a sophomore from Cary majoring in communication, asked Head how people should engage others who don’t want to hear their viewpoint.

“For all the people who don’t listen to you, there are going to be people who are listening,” he responded. “Keep using your voice.”

Cadavid appreciated his answer. “For particular issues on campus, off campus, in eastern North Carolina and the Greenville community, it’s important to listen to everyone in the community,” she said. “The catalyst for change he is, is really an inspiration to our generation.”

Crystal Chambers, an associate professor in the College of Education and vice chair of the faculty, agreed. “There were lessons here for the entire ECU community,” she said. “There were lessons here that we can move forward” without violence or intimidation.

MLK Celebration speaker Payton Head talks with ECU students on the importance of using their voice to encourage change.