PANAMA CITY — A student club held an inaugural luncheon Wednesday to mark the lasting memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy.
“We’re hoping to show the community that there are black students, as well as (other) minority students, that are being productive citizens,” said Tanisha Peterson, president of the club. And “to let students know Dr. King’s dream lives on, not only nationally, but locally.”
The Black Student Union at Florida State University Panama City held its first annual The Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. luncheon at the campus’s Bland Conference Center.
The BSU held it in conjunction with BSU MLK Week on FSU’s main campus in Tallahassee, she said.
“In the 2012-2013 school term, we had enrolled 73 African-American students — 53 women and 20 males,” Peterson said. “This year, it’s in excess of a hundred. That just means there is a greater need to let black students and minorities know that they have an outlet.”
The event drew a small racially mixed crowd.
Keynote speaker Shelley Clark, who is youth advisor of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, made note of the importance of building social capital.
“Our social skills are waning,” Clark said, adding that people can become more powerful if they engaged each other.
Power, she told the audience, is best executed as a group rather than as individuals and listening is the first step to power.
“I would want (the audience) to focus on listening in order to develop consciousness in order to act,” Clark later said. “Before we take action, we have to have some sense” of collective thought.
Wednesday was King’s birthday.
