On January 19, Deerfield celebrated its annual tradition of honoring Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and his broad impact on lives today with a focus on the theme of dignity. Especially anticipated was a talk from award-winning poet Terrance Hayes, whose presentation kicked off the day’s events. Afterwards, students attended discussions among advisory groups, current English classes, and 27 elective workshops for 10th, 11th, and 12th graders, covering everything from race in college admissions to the social and artistic legacy of salsa music and dance.
Although the programming took place on Thursday, planning for this year’s MLK day celebration began last summer, when Director of the Office for Inclusion & Community Life Steven Lee began drafting a years-long, community-wide initiative he calls “Dignity, Dialogue, and Deliberation.” Mr. Lee said he wanted to address the desire on campus to “create an environment where everyone [feels] free to express his/her/their ideas and opinions” with one another. He mentioned Head of School Dr. John Austin’s previous declaration about Deerfield’s “commitment to free and open inquiry, and to expressive freedom — a freedom that includes ideas and opinions that some may consider disagreeable, unwelcome, or unpopular.”
As a prerequisite to pursuing this ideal, it was imperative to Mr. Lee’s initiative that students had a firm grasp upon the quality of dignity, which he defined simply as “the ability to recognize someone’s self-worth,” he said. However, perhaps even more importantly, he said, was their ability to foresee and handle the ramifications that violating somebody else’s dignity might provoke.
Terrance Hayes has a history of writing verse that showcases his expertise in weaving the present with the complex past of Black American culture. His poems revitalize the literary community.
On Thursday, Hayes was interested in dissecting the term “dignity,” analogizing the term with retaliation. In an interview with the Scroll, Hayes explained, “Dignity is almost like someone hit you and you didn’t hit them back,” he said, relating the term to Dr. Martin Luther King, while “humanity suggests … there’s no struggle involved.” Nonetheless, his viewpoint on topics like how one’s ability to wield power affects how they treat others remained fluid: Hayes said, “As a teacher, I believe that we put these ideas forward just for us to think about them; I don’t think the Academy is really for solving stuff. It’s like a laboratory.” He discusses topics for the sake of experimenting to emphasize a lesson about the power of conversation.
According to English Teacher Joel Thomas-Adams, Hayes writes in the wake of the movement that King helped sculpt as a civil rights leader and brings America’s obscured past to life. Mr. Thomas-Adams also admires how Hayes “wields rap and hip-hop rhythms, razor-sharp humor and a constant undertow of both largely forgotten historical references and recent racial violence” to engulf readers in continually increased emotion and rumination as they begin to fully absorb his work, he said. Especially compelling, though, was Hayes’ apparent commitment to allowing his original motivations —rooted in visual art—to continue propelling what he writes. “I try to do the same thing now,” Hayes said, “that I did when I was fifteen.” Hayes writes with passion, entertainment, and transparency, which allows an audience to see a unique reflection from his perspective that also teaches them something about themselves.
Although Mr. Lee didn’t know the content of Terrance Hayes’ speech ahead of time, he said that what mattered most to him was that students took it as an opportunity to “really think deeply about dignity” and appreciate the connections Hayes’ words held to their own lives. The MLK day events, above all, were an opportunity to educate the entire student body about dignity. The theme encouraged students to take accountability for what they do and say by engaging in tough conversations and integrating the values within this initiative to consider dignity into the classroom, on the playing field, and in other areas of student life while also recognizing MLK’s legacy.