My coworker, K, and I were put in charge of this past Martin Luther King Jr. Day for the children’s department at our library. It was my first time being in charge of this program and K and I agreed we wanted to approach it with joy, celebration, and truth. Neither K or I are black, but we’ve both been watching current events unfold and wanted to create a space for learning and relating to each other. So here’s what we did…
Our goals for the program, in addition to creating a safe space for learning and relating to each other, were:
- Showcase current and historical factors in the civil rights movement.
- Have engaging, but possibly passive, activities all day.
- Look to black futures while still acknowledging the past.
This was a bit harder than I imagine past years have been because our children’s department was closed for remodeling, leaving the meeting rooms full of children’s materials. This basically meant we had the auditorium and the atrium to work with in terms of programming space. We’re extremely lucky to work in a fairly large library with accommodating coworkers. Here’s what we did:
First, we invited our town’s Peace Choir, who sang in our atrium (oh man, the acoustics! It traveled up to the 2nd floor (our adult floor) and even to Administration on the 3rd floor). They sang just for 20 minutes, but people gathered around the entire atrium, the stairs leading up to the 2nd and 3rd floors to watch and sing with them. This is where our goal to show the historical side of the civil rights movement came in.
After the choir finished, we set up tables in the atrium and had volunteers from the high school’s diversity club help prep and lead some crafts (they showed up an entire hour early 0.0). We had the kids make Peace Doves out of cardstock birds with a slit in the middle to place colorful tissue paper for wings.
We asked the kids and their caregivers to write or draw something they could do to spread kindness and acceptance instead of hate. We got all kinds of amazing answers! Some of my favorites: “Make sure everyone has somewhere to sleep” “Tell people I love you.” We asked the kids to leave their doves with us so that we could hang them around the children’s room as soon as we were done with the remodel.
The crafts went on for quite a while, before and after our next performance. I was SO excited for this next bit. We had a hip-hop group from our town’s university come perform, talk about dance and their experience in the world. They were such lovely and talented girls and our patrons were REALLY into it!
They did a sample of some dancing, revved up the crowd, then talked about what dancing meant to them, how it has impacted or informed their lives. A few spoke about how dance has given them a way to tap into their community and feel valued when the general world can sometimes reflect hate toward black people. The audience was completely quiet for that portion, soaking in this girl’s feelings and experiences and reflecting on their own actions. Finally, they invited some of the audience onstage to learn some moves. The audience was fantastic during the entire show. Showing support and celebrating with the dancers.
I think the entire day went really well. K and I had a lot of fun, even if it was a run-around kind of day (I got 15 minutes to eat my lunch, haha!) with unexpected turns. The best thing was that while we were overseeing different activities, we overheard a lot of praise and love for our library and our programs. One I won’t forget anytime soon: “I can always count on our library for really great Martin Luther King Day programming.”
*Note: Photos were all taken by our lovely and talented marketing and communications department
Librarian Ginny 