Students learn of black heroes

Demario Ford quietly set aside his routine social studies homework yesterday to express his thanks to Coretta Scott King, who helped solidify civil rights in the United States and around the world.

“Thank you for stepping up and carrying the African-American burden on your back and never letting it go,” Demario, 12, wrote in his elegy to Mrs. King, who died Tuesday.

“Even if it was a very hard challenge, thank you for getting it done.”

Demario and his roughly 30 other seventh-grade classmates at Holy Redeemer Catholic School in Northwest are among thousands of area students who will learn and write about Mrs. King during Black History Month.

Mrs. King, the wife of Martin Luther King, died at the Santa Monica Health Institute in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, after a long illness. She was 78. King is considered the most important civil rights leader in U.S. history. He was assassinated in 1968.

As Demario’s teacher, Darlene Young, strolled from desk to desk asking students to name characteristics that define Mrs. King’s legacy, hands flew up from all corners of the classroom.oThomas caught a train shortly after the contest to make her shift at a Burger King on Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.As Demario’s teacher, Darlene Young, strolled from desk to desk asking students to name characteristics that define Mrs. King’s legacy, hands flew up from all corners of the classroom.As Demario’s teacher, Darlene Young, strolled from desk to desk asking students to name characteristics that define Mrs. King’s legacy, hands flew up from all corners of the classroom.om.

“Equality,” one student said.

“Friendship,” another answered.

“Pride,” said one more.

The King family holds a special significance at Holy Redeemer, where 98 percent of the students are black and half use vouchers to attend the school, just one block from the hardscrabble Sursum Corda housing community.

Many students come from troubled backgrounds and broken homes. Some said they draw strength from Mrs. King’s determination to carry on her husband’s vision of equality and a country free of segregation and racial violence.

“If she wouldn’t have supported his dream, the dream would have been over,” said Javon Cox, 13. “She picked it up and continued.”

Miss Young, 25, said Mrs. King’s death was sad but a good opportunity to teach compassion and character — principles reinforced at Holy Redeemer and ones that will be emphasized during this year’s Catholic Schools Week, which runs through Saturday.

“Though she was not out front and center, she played a role in the back,” Miss Young said. “I learned at a young age that you can be silent but still be heard.”

Hundreds of D.C. public school students will learn more about Mrs. King through the city library system’s Black History Month program.

At the Georgetown Neighborhood Library, about 10 elementary school students in an after-school program yesterday learned more about Mrs. King from an exhibit dedicated to her.

The exhibit included a list of authors and illustrators who have won the Coretta Scott King Book Award, given annually to a black writer and illustrator who promote understanding and appreciation for cultures around the world.

The students also listened as librarian Liane Rosenblatt read a book about singer Celia Cruz and how she used jazz and other musical forms to teach life lessons to young children. The children also danced and made commemorative stamps of other famous black americans.

“She was very much a heroine of the 1960s,” Freya Bernado, 10, said of Mrs. King. “After her husband was assassinated, she helped carry on the civil rights movement and helped other blacks get through their problems. If it was not for her, I would not be in the school I’m in or the apartment I’m in.”