Purpose of life’s journey is to make a difference

January 18, 2017

Appropriately enough for a college campus, people at DSU’s first ever Martin Luther King Jr. Day program were given a homework assignment.

The 15 people attending the January 12 presentation were asked to think about the legacy of Dr. King’s teachings on Monday, the official observance of the national holiday.

DSU president Dr. José-Marie Griffiths said his “I have a dream,” speech demonstrates “great vision…a vision that embraced everyone.”

Keynote speaker Mark Edwards included a video clip of that 1963 speak in his remarks. Edwards is the DSU coordinator of diversity and inclusion.

He said “all of us have a journey in life,” coming from different backgrounds, with different experiences and knowledge, but those are “meaningless if…not shared with others.”

Edward’s words rang true with one of the audience members, DSU student Emmanuel Opoku.

“My dream is to help society,” he said, specifically the economic development in his home country of Ghana.

That was one dream that King didn’t see realized before he was assassinated in 1968, Oboku said, that of making income equally distributed around the world. Africa in particular lags behind other continents in that regard, he added, so after graduating with his cyber operations degree he would like to work to help Africa catch up with the rest of the world.

Opoku first learned about King when he was in college in his home country of Ghana. When studying for U.S. standardized tests like the SAT and ACT, he and other students were required to do some reading about history for essay questions, and got to know Martin Luther King Jr. through his writings. Now, “He is one of my mentors,” he said.

“I hope one day my dream comes true.”