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YSU diversity breakfast honors Martin Luther King Jr.
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Following recent jury verdicts and protests related to police officer-shootings of blacks, the keynote speaker at Youngstown State University’s Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Diversity Breakfast urged attendees to continue Dr. King’s work as a drum major for justice.
“He forced us to confront some difficult choices,” Wilson Okello said at Thursday’s gathering in Kilcawley Center’s Chestnut Room at YSU. “He had an insatiable disposition to name the names, to be the voice for the voiceless.”
Okello, a 2005 city school graduate who earned his bachelor’s degree in education from YSU, is a student personnel professional at Miami University, serving as a first-year adviser.
While at YSU, Okello was selected as the George Wilcox Most Exemplary Paraprofessional in the Center for Student Progress. He earned his master’s degree in human development and family science, college personnel, from the University of Rhode Island.
People talking of the late civil rights leader described him as always looking weary, appearing like there was something on his mind, Okello said. In hearing Dr. King speak, people knew that the situation of the oppressed was urgent, he said.
The breakfast was sponsored by YSU’s Office of Student Diversity Programs and the university’s Student Diversity Council Ambassadors, wearing matching shirts shared something that they love or a message that’s important to them during a portion of the program titled, “All Lives Matter.” Some uttered that mantra, which has become popular after a police officer last summer struggled with and then shot and killed an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Mo. A grand jury failed to indict the officer, leading to protests.
A New York City grand jury also failed to indict another officer who placed a black man in a choke hold, leading to the man’s death and a Cleveland police officer shot and killed a 12-year-old black boy who was holding a toy gun.
The Office of Diversity Programs presented the Dr. King Diversity Award to the YSU Police Department during the program.
YSU President Jim Tressel said among the things he and others on campus talk about is the importance of a culture of community.
Everybody, regardless of their role, age, interests or ethnicity, plays a part in that community, he said.