Students, Community Remember Martin Luther King Jr.

Students, parents and teachers from Centreville, Chantilly and surrounding areas filled the Westfield High School auditorium Sunday for the 17th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Festival, hosted by the Chantilly Pyramid Minority Student Achievement Committee (CPMSAC).

CPMSAC was founded in 1984 by Shirley O. Nelson, and today the organization thrives with memberships from approximately 100 families in the Centreville, Chantilly and Oakton communities.

The theme of this year’s celebration was “Remembering His Dream: Love, Vision, Democracy and Hope.”

Dr. Johnny L. Nelson, president of CPMSAC, started the festival by requesting that the lights be turned on in the dim theater.   He then asked everyone in the audience to look around and witness the very dream of Dr. King occurring right before their eyes, people of different ethnicities sitting together celebrating racial harmony.

“Look around, see the diversity, see Dr. King’s dream,” said Nelson.  “We are it, our children are it.  You look around you and see all of us in all of our diversity living in Dr. King’s dream.”

After Nelson’s speech, CPMSAC co-chairman Deneen Vaughn made some candid opening remarks about King and the CPMSAC.

The Mistress and Master of Ceremony, senior Tara Sydnor and junior William Morgan, are both students at Chantilly High School. Sydnor and Morgan wove in facts from both King’s life and African-American history throughout various points of the show.

More than 390 students participated in the event. The cultural melting pot that is Northern Virginia was strikingly evident throughout the day, especially in the beaming faces of elementary-aged youngsters from a plethora of different races singing and dancing on stage.

One of the more touching moments came early in the program when Westfield High School student Josh Bramstein read his original poem, “The Minority Report.” His poem compares the racial oppression faced by Jews and blacks throughout the history of America.  

Another Westfield student, Valeria Sierralta, further added to the cultural spectrum on display by singing “Vivo y Mueso en tu Piel” in Spanish, which translated to English means “I Live and Die for You.”

The event served as a reminder of what the day is about and why the federal government felt the need to make it a national holiday in 1983. 

The audience was certainly reminded of this when several aspiring young actors performed a skit, “A Reason For The Holiday.” After children expressed their happiness to have a day off from school because of the holiday, their grandfather, played by Westfield theatre student Chaz Coffin, explained to them what exactly this holiday was celebrating.  “It is so important to remember all that (Martin Luther King Jr.) did. We must keep his dream alive,” Coffin said in the play.

The crowd cheerfully sang and clapped along as choruses from Colin Powell, Brookfield, Coates, Centreville and Greenbriar elementary schools sang various  songs including Michael Jackson’s “Heal The World” and  Harry Dixon Loes’s “This Little Light of Mine.”

“The Dr. Martin Luther King Festival gives students another opportunity to showcase their talent," said CPMSAC member Brenda Johnson. "Students from various elementary, middle and high schools come together to pay tribute to Dr. King, who fought for racial equality and paid the highest price: his life."