Martin Luther King is a name no one will ever forget.

His legacy of social justice, peacefully advocating for civil rights, his ideal to show love, and his dream to create racial reconciliation are lessons that have remained with our culture long after his death, and as a society is something everyone should continually be working towards. There is a lot of room for the world to grow in order to reach true justice and reconciliation; however, what Dr. King fought for was crucial to allow those changes to begin.

January 14th-18th was Renton High School’s Martin Luther King celebration week. MLK day took place on Monday, January 21st, but the school celebrated the week prior due to conflicts with multi week. Each day there was a different way to celebrate what Martin Luther King fought for.

• Monday: there was music played by African American musicians
• Tuesday: was Soul Train day where students wore clothes from the 70’s
• Wednesday: there was music played from black-led movies
• Thursday: students wore all black clothes
• Friday: students wore shirts that had a significant leader of color on it

Ms. Neuschwander’s 3rd period leadership class helped make the celebration days as well as the assembly. They have been working since 2nd trimester started to create this week of honor for Dr. King.

On Thursday, during the assembly honoring Martin Luther King, Dajane Tullis sang the Black National Anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” to start out the assembly. The song was created by James Weldon Johnson and first written as a poem, but later set to music by his brother. Later it was adopted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as its official anthem.

Later in the assembly, the MCs honored different African American leaders throughout history who fought for social justice.

In addition, Faith Richardson the president of the poetry club, read a phenomenal poem that reflected her feelings about Martin Luther King and African American rights.

Martin Luther King’s legacy means something different to everyone.

As Ariana King expressed, “Everything MLK fought for is extremely meaningful to me, as I come from a biracial family. Without the ideals of MLK, my family might not have came to be, so his actions influence my life day-to-day.”

In addition she said, “I think it’s important to celebrate MLK because the diversity we see all around us has a lot to do with his actions and ideologies.”

Renton High School has people from a variety of religions, races, nationalities, sexual orientations, beliefs, etc which makes it even more important to love everyone without judgement and follow what Dr King taught people.