Roxbury students sketch King's dream

As dignitaries at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast on Monday paid tribute to the martyred minister's memory, a South End church applauded the winners of an art contest it cosponsored. A fleeting whisper in the cacophony of bigwig speeches that day, the contest nonetheless addressed an intriguing question:

Nearly 37 years after King's assassination, how do young people -- for whom he is a statue in history's gallery of icons, as distant in time from them as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was from their baby boomer parents -- interpret his words, "I have a dream"?

Quamel Buckmire answers with a stark pencil drawing of a young black man in front of a wall splashed with graffiti in jagged, lightning-like script: "non-violence," "Malcolm X," and words from King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Small portraits of King circle the picture, some in reflective pose, but one, under the words "world peace," depicts him scowling, as if displeased at how little peace the world has managed.

Wendy Torres paints a woman wearing a rainbow blouse emblazoned with excerpts from the "Dream" speech, the picture's bright colors conveying the hope behind King's message.

And Elso Lopes uses black and red crayons to personalize King's message. The words "Rest in Peace" and "My Mr. King" flank a young man, while scrolled across his cheek is the sentence, "My dream is to be a leader, not a follower." Lopes signed his name on the man's shirt.

The artwork by these three eighth-graders from Orchard Gardens School in Roxbury earned each a $1,000 certificate of deposit in a contest sponsored by Union United Methodist Church and Citizens Bank. About 40 eighth-graders entered the contest; the winners were announced at the King Day breakfast hosted by Union United and St. Cyprian's Episcopal Church.

For Union United's pastor, the Rev. Martin D. McLee, the contest was an opportunity to involve his parish tangibly with young people "to give the church feet, as it were, to walk to the community."

For administrative ease, the sponsors limited the contest to one school. McLee said Orchard Gardens' eighth grade was selected because his church already reaches high school students with its scholarship program and because the school is in a symbolically strategic neighborhood, near public housing and an area targeted for revitalization.

"The inner city of any great city doesn't always get the attention that it ought to get," said the pastor, who judged the entries with artist Jennifer Bickerstaff. "This was an intentional effort to really put focus on some of those kids and their work."

He said that when he spoke with one student artist, "it was clear that he didn't understand just how great his talent was."

Sitting in teacher Shari Werner's art class at Orchard Gardens, two of the contest winners described the different ways in which they had come to know about King. "When I was in elementary [school], you had to read a paper about him, answer questions," Wendy said. Quamel said he gleaned information from stories his grandmother told him. Do young people understand how King's civil rights work, a movement that sought to change secular laws and lawmakers, depended for its irrigation on King's Christian faith?

Some contest entries paid homage to King's religiosity by including crosses. "One of the kids actually drew a church steeple," McLee said.

Wendy said, "I knew that he preached."

Quamel added, "Some of the things he did I thought were, like, religious." But, Quamel said, in his drawing he tried to convey universal themes that appeal to believers and nonbelievers, to depict how King "showed us the way to freedom and justice."

McLee said several student artists talked about violence and the challenge of following King's code of nonviolence. "Dr. King has the uniqueness of being a larger-than-life figure, larger than a clergy person," he said. "While I think they were aware of his stance as a religious leader, I think he is viewed by younger persons as just a great figure of history, not only tied to a particular institution such as the church. . . . For some of the kids, it was Dr. King the minister. For others, it was Dr. King the civil rights leader. For another, it was just Dr. King, one who was living but is now dead."

Both teenagers are aware that King's mission remains a work in progress, for they have felt the bite of prejudice themselves. Wendy said a friend recently told her that the friend's mother had banned her from hanging out with Hispanics, an order since rescinded. "I guess her mom had noticed that Hispanics are not all that bad -- that we're not bad at all." Quamel said his mother had been accosted by a man, perhaps a homeless person, who asked why she didn't go back to Africa.

"Some of [King's] work has been completed," said Wendy, "but there is some racism sometimes."

In part because prejudice lingers, the contest organizers hope that their art competition does, too. McLee said the plan is to make it an annual event.

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