#PickOfTheWeek | Queens College MLK Event Features Gospel Music + Speeches
BY QEDC It's In Queens
Martin Luther King Jr. kicked off Queens College’s John F. Kennedy Memorial Lecture Series with a powerful speech on May 13, 1965. The Baptist minister argued for peaceful disobedience in the struggle for Civil Rights, but he also honored Andrew Goodman, a QC student who had been murdered by Ku Klux Klan members less than a year earlier. The 20-year-old was registering African Americans to vote in Mississippi as part of the 1964 Freedom Summer Project.
This Sunday, Jan. 16, QC will stream its annual MLK Jr. Day commemoration, We Are Not Satisfied: There Is a Long, Long Way to Go in the Footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., at 3 pm. Yes, it’s streaming this year.
Trey McLaughlin and The Sounds of Zamar, a choir from Georgia, will offer a virtual performance of their adaptations of contemporary Gospel, Pop, and musical theater. They’re known for opulent harmonies and beautiful blends of ballads and anthems of original songs giving glory to God.
After that, a video featuring five QC students who attended MLK’s 1965 speech—Noel Hankin ’68, Elliot Linzer ’80, then-Student Association President Ronald Pollack ’65, Wayne Price ’66, and Mike Wenger ’65—will screen.
The program will wind down with words from local elected officials, QC President Frank H. Wu, QC Student Association President Zaire Couloute, and QC Black Student Union Treasurer and Student Senator Jamal Mark.
We Are Not Satisfied is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
Editor’s note: Audio of MLK’s 1965 address is in QC’s Civil Rights Archive at Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library. Click here to listen.
Top image: Trey McLaughlin and The Sounds of Zamar; bottom image: QC