“Many people believe that MLK Day is a day on, not off. That needs to become Guilford’s mantra,” said Africana Community Coordinator Jada Drew, director of the 2010 Martin Luther King Jr. commemorative events. Her words set the tone for a week of teach-ins, marches, candlelight vigils, and thoughtful reflections.The events began at 10 a.m. Jan. 18 in Dana Auditorium. James Shields, director of community learning, kicked off a two-hour teach-in with a speech on activism and achieving dreams.

Jubilant cries could be heard from Dana as the modest but energetic group of attendees cheered the speaker. Adults then joined small groups to discuss little-known civil rights activists, while children were divided into age groups and given short lessons on the significance of the day.

Including children in the Monday morning teach-ins personified the atmosphere of the events.

“Some people say I’m perpetuating racism by telling my kids all these things,” said Director of Multicultural Affairs Holly Wilson. “But I’m not, I’m preparing them. They have to pay attention to the context clues.”

Most of the children involved in the event came from local volunteer sites, among them Avalon, an organization that teaches English to French-speaking African refugees, and Glenhaven, a tutoring program for refugee children. Many Guilford students volunteer regularly at these sites.

The teach-in also gave members of the Guilford community the opportunity to come together over a common cause. Traditional students, CCE students – some of whom brought their children along for the experience – and faculty members explored the issue of race together.

The teach-ins ended with the children pronouncing their dreams and future careers to the audience, which filled the upper right corner of Dana Auditorium. Many children wanted to be teachers, a few firefighters, and a select adventurous group professed a desire to be superheroes.

Shields encouraged their ambition, saying, “That’s important because what we learned today is that anyone can be great, if they serve (their community).”

Later that day, a small group of students and faculty departed from Founders and traveled by bus to the Martin Luther King Jr. events downtown, where they joined students from other local colleges in a march. The march ended at with reflection at the Greensboro College chapel, where participants were urged to contemplate the meaning of the day.

According to Drew, less than 1 percent of Guilford students attended the events.

Less than 1 percent attended the events last year.

“This is embarrassing,” she said, “because the core values that Guilford stands on mirror many of the ideals and beliefs of Dr. King.”

Apart from the events held at Guilford, several service opportunities were available throughout Greensboro. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was originally created to provide citizens with an opportunity to serve. Its official name is Martin Luther King Jr. Service Day. But the majority of students, said Shields, “slept in.”

Wilson hosted a discussion of King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” at noon on Jan. 19. Faculty members and students gathered in the Africana studies lounge to share personal experiences with racism.

Junior Jasmine Wood, a white student from Tennessee, expressed her frustration with her hometown.

“One of my good friends, an exchange student from Germany, asked me, ‘Do you think you’re racist?’ And I told her, ‘No, of course not, we don’t have those issues here.’ But then I realized, oh, wait, we do.”

Wood’s career at Guilford, she said, has helped to “develop a language to talk about these things.” But talking at Guilford isn’t enough; when Wood attempted to bring that language back home, she said of her family, “They didn’t want to hear about these conversations.”

And not wanting to hear – not wanting to step outside comfort zones – is something all participants in the MLK events agreed was at the root of the problem.

Latino Community Project Coordinator Jorge Zeballos, agreeing with Wood, said, “You don’t ruin Thanksgiving.”

As senior Catherine Roberts, a participant in the Jan. 18 teach-ins, puts it, “I’m irate.” Why? “Because I cannot believe that students would attend a school that professes such core values as integrity, and equality, that are so close to King’s values, and not hold themselves and their school to that standard.”

According to Roberts, complacency is the problem. “We say, ‘Oh, we have a black president. I have friends that aren’t white.’ We’re missing the point. Other people have fought our battles for us; we’re so privileged now, we forget what we came from.”

Throughout the events, participants cited Guilford as a school traditionally considered liberal and progressive. But Guilford College was the last North Carolinian college to integrate. The executive board at the time, according to Shields, was very conservative and considered integration “unwise and dangerous.”

Eventually, of course, Guilford’s unwritten policies changed; but, as Shields said, “What (the executive board) said was that ‘It must be done in a manner so that it does not affect those of us already here.'”

The first black student to attend Guilford College in 1962, Shields said, enrolled in one religious studies course for no credit.

“It was a big deal,” he said. “We had to call parents and tell them, ‘It’s O.K.. He’s not receiving credit He’s not in classes with your children.'”

In 1968, Guilford admitted 28 black male students. As a result, Shields said, “several influential old-school Quakers withdrew their support.”

As most students are aware, Guilford once played a part in the Underground Railroad. The Coffins, a historical Quaker family active in the Railroad, reputedly said that slavery was not “laws that we feel compelled to follow.”