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The event featured spirited performances by the Gospel Knights singers and the Vision Steppers dance troupe. It also included powerful prayers and remarks by Barbara Dawson, the Society of the Sacred Heart’s Provincial of the United States and Canada.
Dawson praised King, calling him one “our 20th-century prophets.” She said prophets — such as King — often emerge when things aren’t going well and people aren’t getting along with each other.
King emerged at a time when Americans of different races couldn’t sit at the same restaurants, occupy the same seats on a bus or live in the same neighborhood, Dawson said.
“He was a prophet,” she said of King. “He saw something wrong and said, ‘We’ve got to do something about this.’”
On the federal holiday marking his birth, many remember King for his “I Have a Dream” speech, which he delivered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 1963. King, a pastor and activist, was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tenn.
Each year, Sacred Heart Greenwich holds a service to commemorate his life. “He was someone who had a vision on how our country and how our world could be a better place,” Dawson said at Friday’s event.
Speaking to the students, Dawson said King and other prophets were at one time “young people just like you.” She encouraged them to pause and think about a dream they had for their community, neighbors or family.
Dawson said her personal dream for the future is that all children would experience a great education like the one she had at a Sacred Heart school when she was growing up. To that end, Sacred Heart Greenwich helped provide desks to a school in Africa -- among its many philanthropic programs.
Sacred Heart Greenwich, which is located on King Street in the northwest corner of town, has an enrollment of 740 girls from kindergarten through 12th grade. It is one of 22 schools in the network of Sacred Heart schools in the U.S. and Canada.
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