A group of third and fourth-grade students, donning black berets and carrying their school banner, led the procession up Claiborne Avenue in the Lower Ninth Ward. The band, mostly consisting of seventh graders, followed behind, dressed in red jackets and white gloves. Sparkly baton twirlers and dancers impressed with their high kicks, while cheerleaders chanted and waved colorful pompons. Bringing up the rear were three third graders, holding a banner bearing the image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and their message: “3rd Grade … Still Dreaming 2 bedroom house = $1,300 a month Gasoline = $3 a gallon No Segregation, Equal Rights, Voting, Jobs for All = Priceless.”
Just two days before the federal holiday commemorating Martin Luther King Jr., students and staff members from his eponymous public school in the Lower Ninth Ward organized a scaled-down version of their customary event honoring the civil rights leader. Student musicians and dancers from St. Augustine High School, Sarah T. Reed High, and Lafayette Academy Charter, three other schools in the city, joined King’s students for the two-hour affair on an exceptionally cold day in New Orleans. This was the first time since Hurricane Katrina struck that the King school could hold the parade through the surrounding streets. The 500 students at King, the first public school to open in the neighborhood post-storm, had already spent the preceding days discussing King’s legacy and penning essays about what he meant to them.
“We have to emulate Martin Luther King,” stated Terry Johnson, a seventh grader who played the trumpet in the parade. “He led marches, so we are leading a march too.” As the procession proceeded past boarded-up shops and partially collapsed houses along Claiborne Avenue, a prominent road, it was impossible to overlook the significance of young African-American students marching in honor of the civil rights leader through what was once one of New Orleans’ most vibrant black communities before Hurricane Katrina. The neighborhood, one of the hardest hit by the storm, has been slowest to recover.
When the parade reached Tupelo Street, where debris piles and construction trucks signaled various stages of reconstruction, residents were enticed outdoors by the drums and horns of King’s band and the powerful performance of the St. Augustine Marching 100. "Thank you for marching!" exclaimed an elderly man, bundled up against the wind, to King’s band. The marchers then circled around to Caffin Avenue to return to the King campus, with each band playing increasingly louder as they passed Fats Domino’s modest home, distinguished by its white bricks, yellow paint, and the letters "FD" above its entrance. At the end of the procession, with their hands numb from playing in the biting wind, 12-year-old Ryan Ellison contemplated what it meant to attend a school named after Martin Luther King. "It’s an honor," declared the seventh grader. "He was a remarkable man. He championed justice and what is right for all people."
Doris R. Hicks, the principal of King, expressed that hosting the parade felt like another step in reviving the Lower Ninth Ward, even though several schools had withdrawn at the last minute due to the weather. "A small parade, but a powerful message," she remarked. On Monday, King’s students would take their message across the Mississippi River to Jefferson Parish for another event honoring the civil rights leader. To reach their destination, the King kids would board buses and cross the Crescent City Connection, the same bridge where a large group of predominantly black New Orleanians, attempting to escape the chaos at the city’s convention center after Hurricane Katrina, were turned away by police.
