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News

King's words given new life at panel discussion

by JENNIFER EARLY
The Daily Cougar

Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream was kept alive as a panel of UH professors and guests discussed his works during an African American Student Honors Association sponsored event Wednesday in the Honors College commons.

AASHA Vice President Andrae Evans said King's writings provide a truer understanding of his mission.

"It's been said that Dr. King is one of the most known and yet least known figures in American history," Evans said. "This deeper understanding grants us a pristine appreciation for how far we've come as a nation and inspires us to savor the joys of everyday liberty."

Joel Garza, a lecturer for The Honors College class Human Situation, spoke about what he considered to be flawed logic in integrating hip-hop music icons into discussion of King's legacy.

"One of the most politically conscious rap groups (Public Enemy) said that hip-hop music was CNN for the African-American community," Garza said. "I got really excited about hip-hop artists taking on the role that Dr. King had, but then I realized that his call to shun violence, be active in citizenship and praise God was not a call that many rappers take on."

Assistant professor Helen Valier, who teaches Human Situation and in the Department of History, used King's famous quote "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane" to discuss U.S. health insurance.

"Type II diabetes disproportionably affects African-American men. This is a disease in which most insurance companies will pay for an amputation of the leg, but they will not pay for the routine visits to a podiatrist," Valier said. "We have in this country a situation of segregation between those who are insured and uninsured."

Assistant professor Christine LeVeaux, who teaches honors American government, addressed King's "Give Us the Ballot."

"King stresses in this speech that the hour is late," LeVeaux said. "We are contemplating the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States. Some say 50 years is way too long. Why did it take so long?"

Charles Cook, a visiting associate professor who teaches honors American history, concluded by demonstrating through the use of the sermon "The Death of Evil Upon the Seashore."

"King is ... the voice of the civil rights movement, the voice of deliverance," Cook said. "(King) gave an articulation and synthesis to these issues that nobody seemed to be able to do in quite the same way."

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