MLK banquet honors students

D.J. Grayson Sr. was in sixth grade when he first heard civil right’s icon Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I have a dream” speech.

“I was just taken aback,” he said, recalling the video he watched in a classroom.

Grayson was one of about 500 people at the Clovis High School cafeteria Saturday morning to honor the man who delivered the address, at the 13th annual scholarship breakfast hosted by the Clovis Martin Luther King Jr. Commission.

Grayson moved to Clovis about two months ago from Chesterfield, Va. He said his new home is a tight-knit community and he enjoys the people.

“It seems like they are willing to work toward that common goal of we are all created equal,” he said.

Event proceeds benefit the commission’s college scholarship fund. The commission awards scholarships each April to any two seniors based on their grade-point average and an essay contest, said Joyce Pollard, commission president.

The scholarship amount is based on how much money is donated to the fund by April. Pollard said the commission’s goal is to award two, $1,000 scholarships. Last year two students were given a $600 award.

The event featured a performance by Lincoln-Jackson Arts Academy students and songs from the three-man group C.O.D. (Called Out of Darkness).

“Anytime we can celebrate something as far as overcoming boundaries of race, it is a good thing,” said Rodrick Stone, a 20-year-old member of the group based at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Clovis.

A 10-foot-wide sign read “Happy Birthday Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” a tribute to King’s birth on Jan. 15, 1929. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed into law a public holiday honoring King’s life each third Monday in January. Saturday’s breakfast was a lead in to Monday’s annual march and rally on the city’s southwest side.

Motivational speaker Yvette Kaufman-Bell, a CHS and Eastern New Mexico University graduate, delivered the keynote address. With an authoritative and deliberate tone, Kaufman-Bell quoted King often and discussed education’s importance.

“My African-American children, my Hispanic children, my Jewish children do not know the vast opportunity in this nation,” Kaufman-Bell said. “It is up to us to inform them.”

Kaufman-Bell serves as the youth development director with the YMCA of Central New Mexico. She challenged the crowd to remember the presentations they heard during the event and to treat people equally.

Racism, she said, still exists.

“It would not be wise for me to stand here and say some of you have not experienced it lately,” she said. “There is more work to do.”

Clovis High School 10th-grader Callie Span delivered a speech she wrote for the event. With her voice shaking slightly, she read the words describing the King’s importance and the need to carry forth his message.

When she concluded the crowd stood and applauded.

“We need to get up and do something to make a change,” Span said. “It takes unity, faith, strength and courage to prove to the world that anything is possible.”