Dear Families,
Our annual January House Block celebration to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a very special tradition at Wayland Middle School. In this newsletter, I share with you the remarks I offered our school community as my small part in this wonderful day.
Respectfully,
Betsy Gavron, Principal
Watch “Love is love is love is love...Lin Manuel Miranda’s Sonnet Speech from the 2016 Tony’s”
HERE
.
Remarks for Wayland Middle School honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.” You just heard Lin Manuel Miranda share this powerful tribute as he accepted his 2016 Tony Award for best score for the musical
Hamilton
. Just hours before that ceremony a mass shooting, motivated by hate and discrimination, had killed 49 people. I think Miranda’s words aimed to comfort a shocked nation would have resonated with Dr. Martin Luther King, whom we come here to honor today. King too rejected hate, believing that love was a more powerful force to shape our country.
Though racial inequity was pervasive in his time, King, like Miranda, knew hate did not have to define our future. In fact Dr. King saw love and equity as a powerful antidote. Although black men and women were denied the same Civil Rights as their white counterparts in the 1950s and ‘60s, King did not resort to violence. Though riding buses, lodging in hotels, using public restrooms, and voting were not equally accessible to all citizens of our country, King did not take up weapons.
King inspired like-minded activists of
all
races and religions to risk their lives to challenge unjust laws and practices through peaceful protest.
King’s life work was devoted to promoting love, hope, unity, and freedom in the face of hatred, and he was unwavering as he sought a peaceful means to realize the equality promised in our Constitution. Dr. King knew and wisely proclaimed,
“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
King not only spoke words of love and unity, but he modeled these values. Martin Luther King Jr. was devoted to the concept of amity - or friendship. His commitment to a better world led him to develop lasting relationships across racial and religious difference - work which was challenging because it required stepping outside one’s own comfort zone. One powerful example of an unusual friendship for the time was King’s alliance with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Dr. King was a Baptist minister, and Rabbi Heschel was an Orthodox Jewish leader, who had escaped Hitler’s Europe to seek refuge in the United States. The two men aligned across racial and religious differences to forge a friendship and find commonality in their messages. In this iconic photo you see them working together, side by side, as a powerful, interfaith team. They preached in churches, addressed synagogues, and spoke to crowds at all kinds of venues to combat racism and spotlight injustice. Heshel condemned racism proclaiming, “You cannot worship God and at the same time look at man as if he were a horse.” In return, King aligned with Heschel speaking out against the mistreatment of Jews, reiterating his belief that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Both men knew that injustice and racism undermined beliefs common across both their religions. On March 21, 1965, together King and Heschel walked in the famous march beginning in Selma, Alabama. By the time they arrived in Montgomery, Alabama, four days later, 25,000 followers of all races and religions had joined their journey. Four months later the President Lyndon B. Johnson Signed the Voting Rights Act, further protecting Black American’s right to vote. Heschel and King’s friendship was an example of the power of amity that literally changed the world.
A second influential friendship across divides was the connection between Daniel O’Connell and Fredrick Douglass.
Daniel O’Connell was born in West Ireland in 1775. As a Catholic, he was discriminated against through unfair British laws. At that time Catholics couldn’t attend schools, vote, or run for office. O’Connell was forced to go abroad to study to become a lawyer. In time, O’Connell led a mass movement of marginalized people, resulting in the Catholic Emancipation.The Emancipation enabled Catholics to become part of the British Parliament, and O’Connell was elected to represent the British for the rest of life.
Frederick Douglass, though a generation younger than O’Connell, was a kindred spirit in the fight for social justice. Douglass was born into a life of slavery in 1818 on a plantation in Maryland and separated from his mother at the age of one. He experienced brutality at the hands of his slave owners. Throughout his childhood Douglass held onto a spirit of hope -- a hope for a different future. Douglass plotted a plan of escape by disguising himself as a sailor. He traveled stealthily from Virginia to New Bedford, Massachusetts. In Massachusetts Douglass began to tell his story as a self-freed man to audiences supportive of the anti-slavery movement. He traveled to Europe on an anti-slavery campaign where he had the good fortune of meeting and befriending Daniel O’Connell.
Through his friendship with Douglass, O’Connell came to see his moral imperative as being larger than his work in the British Isles. He became convinced that all forms of oppression were immoral and began work to end slavery abroad. In 1833 O’Connell publicly criticized the US policies and motivated 60,000 across Great Britain to sign a letter condemning slavery. Likewise, Douglass’ friendship with O’Connell broadened his lens. An up close look at the pain caused by the Irish potato famine drove Douglass to see the universality of human suffering. Douglass became concerned not only with ending slavery, but with ending suffering across the world.
When people take the time to know each other well, peel back the stereotypes, and learn someone’s story, they find commonalities in our humanity.
Together, these stories of amity across difference in pursuit of justice - and countless stories like them - serve as a
moral counterbalance to the tradition of racism that occupies so much of our national story.
How can love and amity inform our lives in the 21st century? How can we at Wayland Middle School be inspired by MLK’s legacy to reject hate and choose love and friendship instead? You may have paused at our amazing new Martin Luther King Jr. Pop Up Museum outside the library in recent days to consider the question, “How we can become a beloved community?” On ribbons I have seen potential ideas to make our community a more beloved one. Additionally, 7th grade English teacher, Ms. Waldstein, and I have seen action as we’ve coached Wayland’s first Tenacity Challenge Team - the OTG’s. The OTG’s committed to a project to better our community. The challenge they identified and sought to address was WMS students being too comfortable in their friendship groups and missing out on the potential of getting to know people outside their close circles. They’ve seen students make inaccurate assumptions about classmates without really understanding them first. As a school the OTG’s identified that we had room to grow in the ways that we connect across difference. Inspired by a book
Harbor Me
by Jacqueline Woodson, their plan was to offer a space for boys and girls from various backgrounds and different friend groups to come together to talk regularly - without adults present. The new groups would gather in ARTT rooms - A Room To Talk - and spend one lunch per week together sharing about their lives in and out of school. A Room to Talk might help us grow amity and deepen the Belonging, Empathy, Respect, and Trust or BERT, to which we aspire. If the model is a success, we hope to expand it next year.
Even if A Room To Talk is not a match for you, this year. I encourage you to consider ways you can be more open to amity. How can you get to know your classmates better? How can you find ways to learn their stories? How can you work to understand their opinions? Where can you choose love over unkindness and help make our community more beloved?
I think Dr. King who we honor today, and Lin Manuel Miranda who we heard from at the start would smile upon the efforts of the OTG’s. Through sharing openness, honesty and friendship they see the possibility to improve our school and deepen our care and commitment to one another. As you go forth in to your day think about the ways you too can learn from King’s work, learn from friendships that inspired justice, and be motivated to seek amity. Love is love is love is love is love. Thank you.*
* I offer a special thank you to long time Wayland resident and proponent of amity, Ann Landry who introduced me to “An American Story - Race Amity and the Other Tradition.”
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