Letters to the Editor (Jan. 29)
Supporting King celebration
On behalf of the membership, staff and board of directors of The Kansas African American Museum, I’d like to thank the Wichita community for supporting our recent Martin Luther King holiday celebration.
We hosted afternoon auditions that led to seven Wichita-area students receiving $80,000 Wiley College scholarships that evening. Then, Wiley’s renowned acapella choir wrecked the awards ceremony at St. Mark United Methodist Church with an unbelievable performance.
That evening, we honored the important work of Deltha Colvin, David and Lynn Gilkey, Wichita police chief Gordon Ramsay, and the “Church on the Street” homeless ministry.
Our sterling emcee, Fred Ervin, guided us through an evening devoted to one of King’s most challenging ideas: finding your conscience, finding your voice and speaking truth to power – no matter the cost.
“There comes a time when silence is betrayal,” King said in that Riverside Church address criticizing the Vietnam War. Many believe the speech cost him his life a year later.
But King’s spirit lives on here in Wichita, where community servants such as Colvin, the Gilkeys, our police chief and homelessness advocates, educate children, protect the vulnerable, and nudge us inexorably toward our hearts, our conscience and our better angels.
Mark McCormick,
executive director,
Kansas African American Museum
Dennis stands for education
Dale Dennis is a Kansas treasure. He is the most knowledgable person in the state about school finance and a strong advocate for public education. I have witnessed Dennis in legislative committee meetings patiently providing basic information to hostile or poorly informed legislators. He has stayed on the job past retirement age when we had anti-public education commissioners. Superintendents and boards can rely upon him for budget advice and information.
The current attack on him appears to be an effort to discredit the court ruling for adequate school financing by suggesting that funds were misspent. When writing the school finance formula, the Legislature needs to consider that many urban students may live less than two miles from their schools but they do not have a safe neighborhood or safe traffic crossings to enable them to walk to school.
Geraldine Flaharty,
Wichita
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This story was originally published January 29, 2018 at 4:52 AM with the headline "Letters to the Editor (Jan. 29)."