On Monday Jan. 20, we celebrated the life of Martin Luther King Jr., a man who fought for what he thought was right. Terar Everhart led the Black Student Unions club by speaking about King in chapel on Thursday Jan. 16. Vicki Vincent, Director of Alumni Relations, knows all about the history of Darlington and its black community.
Vincent informs in detail the history of black people first being enrolled into the school and how the first black person encouraged others to come to Darlington.
“Our first African American black person at Darlington was a guy named Elson Floyd. He is the class of 1973 and he came to Darlington in his sophomore year, which was in the year 1971. He was the only black person in the Upper School at that time,” Vincent said.“The same year, we also had a middle school student and a lower school student. The middle schooler’s name was Tank Gibson.”
The week of the 20th of January, Everhart had the students write one kind thing on a piece of paper. These pieces of paper were then connected to make a “kindness chain,” the chain is now displayed in the student center. Here are Everhart’s thoughts behind the “kindness chain”.
“The kindness chain embodies his quotes about just sticking with love and choosing love and I feel like it gave the students a chance to reflect on being kind and it gave them a chance to say kind words to each other,” Everhart said. “When I was putting the chain up, I thought, well, maybe if it doesn’t affect the whole school, then maybe someone was speaking to themselves. The idea of the chain was just to spread kindness throughout the school and share kindness. It is a great visual representation of how kindness can spread and how big kindness can be if each of us decide to do some good. It might not be a ton of good but it is still some good, and it can still do a lot for the community.”
Vincent passionately tells the story of Martin Luther King’s effect on the school, and the community surrounding it. She believes that the story of King influenced the Darlington community to welcome other races, including blacks.
“I think we had some really wonderful progressive people in Rome, who sat on the Board of Directors, a gentleman named Vernon Grizzard, his family owned Southeastern Mills at the time,” Vincent said. “He was very passionate about making sure that Darlington became more inclusive and wanted to give people the opportunity to get a Darlington experience and education. He actually gave the funds to make scholarships possible for that and so there is an Elson Floyd scholarship that they named in Elson Floyd’s honor. The Grizzard family has been very instrumental in funding that scholarship and that brings black students to Darlington both day and dorm.”
She later adds on details about Floyd’s accomplishments and how he not only changed Darlington, but went on to change the world.
“I think Darlington had a very smooth transition and had no protests or violence, very welcoming,” Vincent said. “I am sure it was not easy and Elson would have told the same but the guys in his dorm were very nice and inclusive, they stayed lifelong friends with him. He passed away five or six years ago, he was the president of Washington State University, a very, very influential person. He had gone to University of North Carolina, worked for Berry University then went to Missouri and then went on to Washington State. He was the first African American black person to be president of Washington State University and he had cancer and that is how he died. He made a lot of dynamic changes in the world and he actually came and spoke here on campus. He was a distinguished alumni for the Centennial in 2005. So 20 years ago Elson came back to campus and then after he passed away, all of his family came here, we had a service for him. Where the flag pole is, it is actually called the Elson Floyd point. So there is a plaque there that tells you about Dr. Floyd and about all of his accomplishments.”
Everhart’s speech during chapel helped many students truly understand just how big of a difference King made around the world. This is what she says the main point of the message was.
“The chapel last Thursday was mainly about Martin’s life and just a reminder of who he was and the further we move into the future, the further away we get from history,” Everhart said. “I think it is important to remember people like Martin Luther King, who you know advocated for a free minded, a free nation, a free person and just equality. I like that it is still relevant today, we are all different, in whatever way we are. Whether that is talent or skin color, you know we are all different and we all recognize that we are different. I think that because we know that we are different that we can now benefit and help each other because of our differences.”