Grove City College will honor the life and faith of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a special chapel service focused on racial reconciliation.
With students still on winter break Monday, when the King Day holiday is officially observed, the College will hold the special service at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 24, in Harbison Chapel on campus.
Rev. Michael Chen, director of Cross-Cultural Ministry with the Coalition for Christian Outreach, will be the featured speaker, along with members of Students Excited About Diversity, a campus organization dedicated to multicultural understanding and racial reconciliation.
“The chapel service has been held for many years now at Grove City College in order to set time aside as a community and to reflect together on the values of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” Natalia Harris, the College’s director of Multicultural Education & Initiatives, said. “King’s life and work embodied the message of scripture, which tells us that we are united as one in Christ and called to love all God’s children.”
In February, the College is marking Black History Month with a focus on the Freedom Riders, civil rights activists who risked their lives and freedom in 1961 on integrated bus and train trips through the South. They were harassed, beaten and imprisoned but drew national attention to the evil of segregation and injustice of Jim Crow laws.
Grove City College will screen the acclaimed documentary “Freedom Riders” and host a discussion at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 6 in Sticht Lecture Hall in the Hall of Arts and Letters on campus. The movie tells the story of the “bold and dangerous experiment designed to awaken the conscience of a complacent nation.”
Dr. Ernest “Rip” Patton Jr., who participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides, will speak on campus at 7 p.m. Feb. 20, also in Sticht Lecture Hall. Patton, then a 21-year-old college student, was expelled from the Tennessee State University for participating in the movement.
All events are free and open to the public.
For more about Grove City College, visit www.gcc.edu/diversity.