January 22, 2020 437 PM
MARFA — At a ceremony Monday on the Presidio County Courthouse lawn, school kids and community members braved the cold to honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In addition to some Marfa locals, students from Marfa ISD were out in full force. Also present were elementary schoolers from Dirks-Anderson Elementary in Fort Davis.
“I started three years ago bringing you here, because this is special,” Oscar Aguero, superintendent for Marfa ISD, said near the start of the ceremony. “What we do on these steps is special.”
He acknowledged that kids elsewhere might have the day off but stressed that what Marfa students were doing was more rewarding: They were joining in civic life by “participating, listening, hearing.”
Next up was Gretel Enck, board president of the Blackwell School Alliance. She stressed that MLK Day wasn’t just about honoring the late civil rights leader, but also served to honor “all the people working in the background” for equality and justice. “Anybody can be great, because anybody can serve,” she added.
“And, we’ve got a mascot,” she joked as a tabby cat beelined for the event and started mingling with onlookers.
Ann Marie Nafziger, a Marfa artist and the former mayor, read from “March On,” a children’s book by King’s sister Christine King Farris that describes the March on Washington, where King delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech. Superintendent Aguero returned to read from that speech to students.
“I’ve been blessed to read this for three years,” Aguero said before he started his emotional reading of the speech. “Every time, it hits me a little differently.”
Nafziger returned to give a brief summary of King’s life and legacy, from winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and his opposition to the Vietnam War to his assassination in 1968. Gretel Enck spoke about Marfa’s history of segregated schooling, describing how, until integration in 1965, students of Mexican-American heritage were sent to Blackwell.
As the student-oriented part of the event wound down, a number of Marfa and Fort Davis school kids read poems focused on equality and justice. Allison Scott, principal at Dirks-Anderson Elementary, also read a poem: “Gate A-4,” by the Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye.
The poem describes a woman who, using the little Arabic she knows, comforts an older Palestian woman at the airport. The woman cheers up and begins sharing date and nut mamool cookies with her fellow travelers.
“This is the world I want to live in,” Scott said, reading the poem. “The shared world. Not a single person in that gate — once the crying of confusion stopped — seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies.”
