Thursday, January 22, was one of those days when it would have been nice to be in more than one place at once. To help celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Week, 12 workshops were held on campus with another in Simsbury, where Dr. King once worked in tobacco fields with fellow students from Morehouse College. 

The 45 students who went on the trip to the Simsbury Free Library watched a 2010 documentary produced by Simsbury High School students with support from the free library about the two summers Dr. King spent in the state, 1944 and 1947. In 2011 the students formed the MLK in Connecticut Committee with a goal of building a memorial to Dr. King, the civil rights leader assassinated in 1968. 

In 2021, that memorial — five glass panels that each depict an aspect of Dr. King’s life — became a reality and stands in front of the library, a reminder of the role that Connecticut played in MLK’s life. 

During those summers, he wrote letters back home, one of which said he was able to go to church in Simsbury with white folks and dine in Hartford. “I never though[t] that a person of my race could eat anywhere,” he wrote, “but we … ate in one of the finest restaurant[s].” His fellow Morehouse students in the tobacco dorms also elected him as their religious leader. He described having a bitter feeling when he returned home to the segregated South after his first summer in Simsbury. 

"Perhaps if he hadn't come to Connecticut, hadn't picked tobacco up here, hadn't felt like a free person, hadn't felt what life was like without segregation and been elected the religious minister, he may not have become such a leader in the civil rights movement," John Conard-Malley, one of the students  who helped make the documentary, told the Associated Press in 2011. 

Two Simsbury High students, members of MLK in Connecticut, helped lead the program for the Loomis Chaffee students on Thursday. After the program at the library, which started outside at the glass panels and continued inside to watch the documentary and to hear about contemporary Jamaican seasonal tobacco workers in Connecticut, the LC students drove to Meadowood, once the site of the thriving tobacco operation in which Dr. King and the others worked.  

Back on campus, students explored a variety of illuminating topics. At the “Activism in Sports” workshop, students watched a New Yorker documentary in Gilchrist Auditorium about Black U.S. athletes who have spoken out about injustice, and the backlash many have faced. The students then did “case studies” on athletes or groups of athletes who have been involved in activism.  

In the “Poetry Through the Harlem Renaissance” workshop in a Chaffee classroom, students read and discussed several short poems by poets from the Harlem Renaissance period, including “One-Way Ticket” by Langston Hughes, “The Heart of a Woman” by Georgia Douglas Johnson, and “If We Must Die” by Claude McKay. Students then made blackout poems using excerpts from “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson — a history of the Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to other parts off the country. Blackout poetry takes existing text and obscures some of the words to create a different poem. 

The workshop “Art as Justice Work: Authority, Power, and Responsibility” took place in a filled auditorium in the Richmond Art Center. Dance director Kate Loughlin and visual arts teacher Mahsa Attaran spoke about their views of the purpose behind their work, Kate’s being dance and choreography and Mahsa’s being photography, fashion design, and other forms of visual art. Kate spoke about dance as an art form, “an expression of humanity ... a way of processing and experiencing the world that we live in.” As an educator, she said, “I hope that art can be a window of curiosity.” Mahsa shared some of the history of oppression and resistance in Iran since 1979 and said her work is a response to her lived experiences. She urged the students to question and raise their voices against oppression and injustice that they witness. The students visited an ongoing exhibit of Mahsa’s work in the Sue and Eugene Mercy Gallery and returned to the auditorium to discuss their impressions. 

In “Student Activism from the Archives” in the Kravis Center, history teacher and school archivist Karen Parsons and students looked at articles and photos from the archives that showed student activism at Loomis, Chaffee, and Loomis Chaffee through the years. Karen also told them about Coretta Scott King’s 1974 visit to campus as the speaker for the Loomis-Chaffee Baccalaureate Service. (The school name was hyphenated that year.)  

The “Blacktronica” workshop was about the contributions of Black Americans to several well-known subgenres of Electronic Dance Music, notably techno and house. One slide in the presentation included a quote from Dan Sicko, author of Techno Rebels: The Renegades of Electronic Funk, who wrote about Detroit’s role in techno: “Aware of both the city’s former glory and its future possibilities, these artists found hope in a decaying infrastructure where none apparently existed.”  

Other workshops included: 

Screening of the movie Hidden Figures: The film portrays three brilliant African-American women at NASA — Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson — who are the brains behind the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, a monumental moment in U.S. history.  

Screening of the movie Selma: This film tells the story of the Alabama city that became the battleground in the fight for equal voting rights in 1965. Despite violent opposition, Dr. King and his followers pressed forward on an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, and their efforts culminated with U.S. President Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  

Stepping Through History: STEP as Culture, Resistance, and Tradition: The workshop explored STEP dance as a powerful cultural practice rooted in African and African American history. Participants watched a multimedia presentation that provided historical context and then followed by a hands-on STEP experience.  

Religion as a Guiding Force: Students and faculty discussed religion as it pertains to MLK, the civil rights movement, and the America and world of today.  

The Need for Wellness: Exploring mindfulness and mental health, the workshop gave participants an opportunity to learn about the implications of mental health for Dr. King and his movement, followed by a discussion of how to support oneself or a friend.   

The Black Athletic Experience: Getting Recruited: The workshop, led by football head coach Adam Banks, focused on college recruiting for people of color. Adam shared personal recruiting experiences from high school to college and outlined steps athletes should follow during recruiting.  

Historically Black College and University (HBCU) Admissions:  Participants engaged virtually with admission officers at HBCUs to learn more about the history of these important American institutions and the benefits of attending a HBCU today.