by Jen Myers
Equity. Community. Justice. Moving.
These are the four words Lowell Community Health Center Director of Learning and Workforce Development and former Lowell School Committee member Stacey Thompson told Lowell High School students to hold dear during her keynote speech at Tuesday morning’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration.
Equity, Community, and Justice make sense together. But, where does Moving fit in?
In 1960, while giving a speech at Spellman College in Atlanta, Dr. King said: “If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving.”
Thompson, a self-described changemaker and disrupter, told the students they will have times in their lives when circumstances may bring them to their knees, when times are tough and things are unfair and people hurt them – but they cannot let those events stop them.
One day when Thompson was running for School Committee in 2021, she and her sister were standing on the corner of Varnum Avenue and Mammoth Road in front of McDonald’s holding campaign signs. People in passing cars waved and hollered words of encouragement and support.
“It was fantastic,” Thompson recalled.
Until it wasn’t.
“Out of nowhere, I’m holding my sign and this person screams at me ‘go home – N-word!’ I’m literally just taken aback,” she recalled. “I’m holding signs, running for office, respected in the community – people knew me before I was running, but this attack, this assault happened to me not far from where I live.”
Did this painful incident make Thompson give up, go home, and binge Netflix? Nope.
“What I want you to understand, is that this did not make me not run – as a matter of fact it made me want to run harder,” she said. “Don’t let anybody take away what you know is for you; what you know you are supposed to do. The idea of equity or shared power for some people is very scary they will hold onto their power as hard as they potentially can and Dr. King fought against that. He said we should all share the power. We should share the experience.”
Although she was angry, Thompson reached down deep to find some level of compassion for the kind of person who would yell such a hateful thing at someone they didn’t even know. She continued her campaign, even though it was very difficult at times.
“I had people who wouldn’t open the door for me; people that would look out, see me, and say no; I had people that did what I just told you they did, but I knew if I did not push then I would not disrupt the system and that’s what Dr. King was about,” she said. “He knew that he was in danger. He knew that people wanted to end his life. He was aware of it, but he still recognized that he had to push, regardless.”
Thompson, supported by her small but mighty three-person campaign team, won that race, becoming the first black woman ever elected to office in Lowell.
In addition to learning to press on in the face of adversity, Thompson said what she wanted the students to take from her experience of running for office is how importance it is to be surrounded by people you can trust and rely on, and to have confidence in what you bring to the table.
“It is really important that the person that you are is seen,” she said. “It is imperative that you are aware that the person you are is enough. As you are.”
Tuesday’s event was also an opportunity to celebrate and recognize the extraordinary new mural depicting Dr. King, painted along the grand staircase in the lobby of Lowell High School.
The piece, “God’s Trombones,” designed and painted by LHS Art teacher Eric Allshouse and seniors Emma Burns and Nev Morin, is named for one of Dr. King’s favorite books, written in 1927 by James Weldon Johnson. The girl painted at the top of the stairs is reading it.
“Through our artwork we aim to highlight the messages of unity, education, and character development championed by civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” said Allshouse. “We hope to send the message that everyone’s voice is represented and heard.”
He added that the title “God’s Trombones” seemed fitting because “the trombone is the instrument possessing, above all others, the power to express the wide and varied range of emotions encompassed by the human voice. We have a lot of different voices here in our school.”
The mural shows Dr. King looking upwards toward where the students go to learn. The rainbow of colorful marchers are taken from actual images of people who marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1965 from Selma to Montgomery.
Burns said she was very proud of how this mural, “our last mark on the school,” came out.
“I hope that this mural resonates with a lot of people and that there are more murals to come at Lowell High,” said Morin.
Thompson told the students a little about Dr. King’s life. Although he was assassinated when he was only 39-years-old, he managed to make a huge impact in a short lifetime. He went to college at age 15; at 17 he wrote a letter to the editor of the Atlanta Constitution declaring that all people deserve basic human rights; at 26 he had earned his doctorate.
That same year, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus so a white passenger could sit, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
“He had just graduated from school, and all of a sudden he is uplifted into this role as a civil rights leader,” marveled Thompson.
“There are times in your life when you may be the first – (King was) the first headliner of the civil rights movement – but he did not do this alone,” she said. “That road can feel lonely, it can feel challenging, but what I want you to do is the same thing he (and she in her campaign) did – have a core group of people that you can hold onto who really have your back – not these fake people – y’all know what I’m talking about – real people that you can tap into that have your back when it comes to it. Have those people and they will help you along the way.”
She encouraged the students to read and reflect on Dr. King’s speeches and keep his legacy of using light, and love, and education to combat intolerance, ignorance, and injustice, alive.
“If you want your community to be stronger, to be more loving, to be more welcoming to be more vibrant to just be better you have to be willing to put in the time and the work and you have to be willing to hold accountable the members of your community,” Thompson said, encouraging them to get involved in their community, register to vote, attend public meetings and have their voices heard.
She encouraged them to fight to continue the important work of diversity, equity, and inclusion that is currently under attack in some realms; to stand up for policies under attack meant to safeguard equity in housing, education, and employment.
“Inclusion means everyone is included. Everyone is accepted. Everyone is seen. Everyone has a voice and that is what Dr. King fought for,” Thompson said. “If you have ever stopped a bully because they were being mean to someone for no reason; if you have ever encouraged a friend or a family member to get their education; if you have done any of those things then there is a King in you. A leader. A changemaker. A disrupter. A fighter for justice is in you.”
