Earlier today, my girlfriend and I went to the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Breakfast that the college hosts. It was in our cafeteria (the great room) and hosted a number of people, from the college and surrounding communities. The entire hall was packed with people, standing or sitting wherever possible. Of course, we show up late, a little after 8am and had to sit on the windowsill to eat, but we later found out that the room had been filled as early as 7:30. After we ate, we found fold up chairs and moved them next to a friend of ours to watch the speeches. First up was Steny Hoyer, the local representative to the House of Representatives, House Majority leader and our college’s very own Board of Trustee member. After him was professor of history, Garry Dennie who was in the 1990s a speech writer for Nelson Mandela and following him was Dr. Janice Talbert Walthour, a local official in St. Mary’s County Public Schools.The theme of the talks revolved around an understanding and appreciation of the progress that has been made between the time when Mathias de Sousa, an African American who participated in the legislature at Saint Mary’s City in the late 1600s, to Martin Luther King and ultimately to President-elect Obama’s victory. All of the speeches were amazing and it was really awesome that I could wake up (albeit a little late) and go see something like this. It was also really great to see the larger community come onto campus and interact with the students and other members of the college community.
Representative Hoyer (Photo credit: SoMdNews.com)
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