BonnerSprings.com

Organizers with the 24th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration want this year’s event to have a higher purpose than just to honor the memory of the civil rights leader.

Melva Jarrett said she wants the celebration to bring people together as one unified community — a goal King himself strived for in his lifetime.

“I don’t want people to think of this day” as just a holiday on which “we just have this event,” said Jarrett, who is co-chair of the 12-member Martin Luther King Community Committee that is organizing the event. “But we’re supposed to be able to change lives with this event; remind people of this humanitarian that had a dream that he wasn’t even in that dream. It was about other people. And he could see where it would get better in America, but it would take people with the same heart and mindset as he to bring that dream to life and to keep that dream going on.”

To that end, Jarrett said committee members had personally invited council members, church leaders and educators in Bonner Springs. The hope is that where city officials go, the community will follow.

“Even those who never came out,” Jarrett said. “Please come out. It is our community that is having this function. It is us that make up the community and we need everyone to come.”

That’s not to say the event hasn’t drawn a large audience of community members in the past, Jarrett said. After 24 years, it would be hard not to. But she said there was always room for improvement and growth.

“It’s been good in the past, but we can make it greater,” she said.

The other co-chairs of the organizing committee are Pam Stewart and Christopher Loggins, both of whom are seventh grade English teachers at Clark Middle School. This year’s event will highlight young members of the community, with several USD 204 students scheduled to perform. Jose Garcia, an eighth grader at CMS, will present a speech, and Alvaro Romo, also an eighth grader at CMS, will recite King’s celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech.

Jourdaine Smallwood, a senior at Bonner Springs High School, will present a poem he wrote, as well as a film he produced documenting last year’s celebration that earned first place last year in the Impact.org challenge. The challenge asked students in Wyandotte County to demonstrate how an individual or group was making a positive impact in Wyandotte County.

Jarrett, who is pastor of Christ First Ministries Inc. in Bonner Springs, will give the event’s main address, which she says is about taking a “look at us now; look how far we’ve come.”

“It’s part of my dream for my community, to keep an openness about themselves,” Jarrett said. “Never get closed or lost. Stay open to change. Stay open to people’s needs and grow. Be humanitarians.”

The celebration will take place at 1 p.m. Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, at First Christian Church, 148 N. Nettleton. Event buttons, though not required to attend the celebration, can be purchased for $1 at the event or prior to the event by contacting Jarrett at 913-441-3181. All proceeds will go to a Martin Luther King Community Committee scholarship for a graduating BSHS senior.

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