Music was the thread that bound Randolph-Macon’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration on campus on January 15. The community gathered in Blackwell Auditorium to hear remarks and selections from the RMC MLK Community Choir, which was convened for the special occasion.

The choir was led by Professor Antonio Hunt, Director of Choral Activities at Randolph-Macon. It featured guest performers from local churches, high schools, and choral groups as well as Randolph-Macon music students.

“As we know, music is all about bringing voices/instruments together, about recognizing the distinct and specific contributions of each to the larger whole – and also the ways in which each part is necessary and improves the whole,” reflected RMC President Robert R. Lindgren. “Their voices, united in harmony, not only enrich this commemorative event but also symbolize the unity and solidarity for which Dr. King tirelessly advocated throughout his life.”

Adding to the depth of that connection, Lindgren said, was the importance of music to the civil rights movement. Professor Hunt enhanced that connection by sharing his own reflections from his time as a student at Morehouse College, from which Dr. King also graduated.

Though Hunt was a student in the 1990s, long after Dr. King attended Morehouse, his legacy looms large at the HBCU institution. In his remarks, Hunt recollected performing in Morehouse’s historic International Martin Luther King Jr. Chapel, meeting King’s widow Coretta Scott King and sister Christine King Farris, and of serving as an associate musician at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he performed on a CD entitled “The Favorite Hymns of Dr. King” with Martin Luther King Jr.’s friend Mary Gurley, who Hunt called “Mama G.”

Hunt also shared memories from his MLK Day tradition while a student in the glee club at Morehouse. “Historic Ebenezer was also the place where the glee club would meet our call time every January 15 to be on the chartered bus fully dressed in our performance attire by 6 a.m. to join and perform with the Annual Ecumenical MLK Jr. Community Choir, where the services were televised globally,” Hunt recalled.

RMC’s MLK Community Choir led the assembled crowd in the civil rights anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson. Their special selection, “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” featured soloists Stefani Lopez, Kristy Woomer, Aiden Hamilton, and Kim Tyler. The service concluded with “We Shall Overcome,” a spiritual adapted by William F. Smith and featuring soloists Antonette Parrish and Marc Lawson.

In closing, President Lindgren encouraged the assembled faculty, staff, students, and friends of the College to commit themselves to help build a better world. He twice echoed the powerful words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. himself: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘what are you doing for others?’”