MLK Jr. Day Remarks: Head of School Andrew Menke

Head of School Andrew Menke P'12 '16 addressed the School community in McEvoy Theater on Tuesday morning as part of the Martin Luther King. Jr. Celebration. Here is the text from his speech. 

Good morning and welcome to a celebration of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  

Dr. King was born in 1929 and assassinated in 1968. I was four years old, and none of you students were born.

Thank you to Mr. Jones for last night’s thoughtful and provocative reflection and to Mr. Fisk for providing a context for Dr. King’s life and work, and for all of his efforts to organize this day of celebration. 

As Mr. Little said yesterday, it is not lost on us that many, perhaps a lot of your friends back home had yesterday off, but I am certain that Dr. King would want us to take the "day on," as he did for 39 years. He graduated from Morehouse College and earned a doctorate in philosophy from Boston University, founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to fight racism, coordinated lunch counter sit-ins in North Carolina and Georgia, wrote tirelessly — penning the inspiring Letter from the Birmingham jail. He arranged and led marches on Detroit and Washington where, as we heard last night, he made his famous "I Have a Dream Speech;" moved into a tenement slum in Chicago; marched to support sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee; spoke out everywhere as he did before his death in the "I Have Been to the Mountain Top Speech." 

Without question, Dr. King would have wanted us to take this "day on" as he passionately and non-violently took every day on all of his life. 

This I believe is the legacy of Dr King, this notion of being on, of being conscious, aware, vigilant and active. 

 

I was thinking about Mr. Little’s personal reflection from last Monday’s morning meeting, about his time growing up in Reading Massachusetts, about going to an independent boarding school in central New Hampshire, and a selective college in the same state. I thought about how these experiences shaped the way he looked at the world, at the way he saw “race.” It prompted me to think about how my experiences have shaped me. 

I grew up outside of Washington, DC and attended a large public high school from 1978 to 1982. There were a lot of students of color and some socio-economic diversity, but little else in the way of visible diversity. Believe it or not, I was one of two white players on an otherwise all-black basketball team at my high school. My best friend, Andre Johnson, was black. We played football and basketball together, I spent considerable time is his home with his extended family, we double-dated to the prom together. He drove a BMW. I had a beat up second-hand van. 

I did not think about it much then, but now I remember that all my black friends lived in one area, on a specific road. It was called Big Woods Road. It was a segregated living area even in the early 1980s. 

I attended a large public university near Baltimore, Maryland, and played football with lots of black players. I used to think that these experiences with people of color helped me to be more in tune with the racial divide, to relate to others, and to be more patient and accepting. I think so, but I’m not sure. 

A parent recently said to me, "My son doesn’t see color.” And I wonder if that’s OK. Is it a good thing to not see color? How is it possible to not see color, to not see difference. In some ways, in many ways, I want to see color and other difference. I want to celebrate them, learn from them,  be enriched by them, and grow as a result of them. Difference is a strength that need not divide us.  But at times, I think difference scares us. And maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing. Perhaps it motivates us in a community like NHS, which is safe and nurturing and ultimately about exploration. It motivates us to think, ask questions, reflect, and take action about that which is unusual and /or uncomfortable. 

As a father and as a school head, I used to think I needed to have all or at least a lot of the answers. And yet on this question, I do not. Race and difference are complicated and scary, sometimes so much so that we stay away from talking about it. So I remain perplexed yet intrigued about race and other differences, how we see it, and how it impacts our lives here — beyond this bucolic bubble of our campus, out in the world. 

And while Dr. King’s specific crusade was about race, I implore you to appreciate the true magnitude of his impact. Yes, he changed the landscape of race relations in this country and — this work is not yet done. But for me, as important, is his legacy of change. He transformed a nation and changed the world — one man, with passion and the courage of his conviction. 

This is a large part of what we need to take away from our "day on." We must resist the ambivalence and apathy that can come from “I can’t possibly make a difference. I am only one person." This is often a convenient excuse that Dr. King irrepressibly refutes. 

So as we enjoy this "day on" and later our service projects —letter writing to soldiers, women’s rights, cards and blankets for the sick and infirmed —  

I believe that this is a day Dr. King would fully endorse. 

Let’s open up our hearts and our minds, perhaps feel that sense of discomfort as we think about “our dreams” for greater care and acceptance in this community and our world and what we can do to “draw on the content of our character” to make those dreams a reality. In my mind, there is no better way to honor the legacy of this amazing man than with action. Thank you for participating in this "DAY ON!"