On Wednesday, April 6, the MLK and Friends club hosted a panel and discussion titled "The King and I." The panel explored the fight for justice told from the perspective of women who have made Martin Luther King Jr.'s "dream" their reality. The event was part of MLK Week, a week of events that commemorate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. by surrounding the date of his assassination. The panelists of Wednesday's discussion were Erika Smith, a staff member of the Transitional Year Program; Director of the Intercultural Center Monique Gnanaratam; and Prof. Jasmine Waddell (Heller).

In an interview with the Justice, MLK Scholar Darlene Zephyrine '11, who helped organize the event, said that the panelists were chosen because "these three women embody the characteristics of those same women who helped reign in the Civil Rights Movement."

Prof. Gordon Fellman (SOC) moderated the event. Of choosing Fellman, Zephyrine said, "We chose a male moderator because ... we didn't want to alienate the presence of the men since that would not be in the spirit of MLK's principles and ... we wanted to have [a] somewhat [of] a male-female balance."

Brandeis club MLK and Friends organized the week's worth of events that commemorated the women who influenced King. Beginning with a memorial vigil on Monday, the week's programs continued through Thursday. MLK Week is usually held in January, surrounding the national holiday of MLK Day. "[This year] we wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate him throughout the semester by hosting events around the anniversary of his assassination," said MLK Scholar Lue-Hing '12, who organized the event with Zephyrine, in an interview with the Justice. "During MLK Week, we celebrate not only Dr. King's memory but ourselves as a family that avidly promotes his ideals of social justice" she said.

When asked why MLK Week decided to focus on the influence of women, Zephyrine said, "It doesn't matter if it's the Civil Rights movement or a corporate office place, but the contributions of women in any major event in the world are often undermined or ignored. The club felt that this was a great opportunity to showcase the women behind 'the King.'"

Lue-Hing said, "Throughout history and especially during the Civil Rights Movement, women had been true vectors of change and the purveyors of peace and needed to be acknowledged for that."

MLK and Friends is a club on campus that was started in 2006 by MLK Scholars, recipients of the Brandeis University Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship, and was recognized in 2007. According to the Brandeis Merit Scholarship site, the MLK Scholarship is awarded to entering first-year students on the basis of academic performance and extracurricular participation in secondary school, outstanding community involvement and demonstrated financial need.

Lue-Hing said, "MLK and Friends was started in 2006 because the MLK Scholars felt that they needed a way to carry on the spirit of community service, leadership-building and community engagement that attracted us to campus as scholars in the first place.

We wanted a way to collaborate with our friends and the rest of the Brandeis community to make this happen." Zephyrine added that "the club is not isolated only to the scholars and our friends but rather to anyone who wants to organize service-learning projects with the purpose of portraying the various ideologies of MLK Jr.