TRIBUTE TO KING

"Education is still the best spaceship to your dreams."

That message was delivered Monday by Dr. Charles I. Rankin, keynote speaker at the 12th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast. The event was the first in a series of local events commemorating the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday.

Planning committee co-chairperson Debra Mitchell-Braxton said approximately 500 Southeast Missouri State University personnel and others attended the breakfast. Attendance was second only to the 1995 breakfast, which featured an address by Anita Hill.

"Interest seems to grow every year," Mitchell-Braxton said. "We're especially happy because this is the start of our semester and we've had such bad weather."

The program featured remarks from a number of campus and community leaders, including university President Dr. Dale F. Nitzschke. Like Rankin, Nitzschke emphasized the importance of education in bringing about common understanding.

Nitzschke said each person and organization should share in the commitment to Dr. King's dream and should work to help see that dream realized in the next century.

Rankin is director of the Midwest Desegregation Assistance Center and a professor of foundations and adult education at Kansas State University in Manhattan. He told the audience that the focus of the 21st century would be on economics and education rather than race and ethnicity.

His message contained anecdotes and statistics that reflected the problems resulting from poor education, including violence, poverty and fear-driven politics. These behaviors are the result of relying on the media and others to educate America's children rather than having them seek education in the home, school and church, he said.

"A community that cares helps prevent these self-destructive behaviors," Rankin said. "Congress must offer more than just prisons; the president must offer more than just empty promises. We have to realize that jails are an expenditure but schools are an investment.

Danielle Carter, a graduate student at Southeast, said she hopes Rankin's message will spur the community to take action within its school system. "I thought he said some things I think the community needs to work on," Carter said. "Maybe they'll try to do something after hearing Dr. Rankin speak."

Rankin has a background in education and has served as an expert witness in several federal desegregation cases. In 1993, he told the Cape Girardeau Board of Education that it was in violation of the 14th amendment because May Greene Elementary School was racially identifiable. He said he hopes community leaders will take his message to heart and work to eliminate racial inequality in area schools.

"We're talking small amounts here," Rankin said. "They have to do something about the inequalities in some of their schools. We make our own poverty, but if you do the right thing these kids will be functional members of their community.

"We have to get past the race. When I took my job (at the desegregation center), I thought I would be in it for maybe five years; I've been at it almost 20 years. The tragedy of my job is it doesn't make any sense."