BY ARIEL MARTINO

In print | Published April 10, 2008

The third annual Tri-Co Peace Week kicked off on Friday, April 4, the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The day included several key events including a performance by a Rwandan dance troupe, a screening of “The Laramie Project,” and a dedication of the Tri-Co’s first peace pole. Two lectures accompanied these events, both highlighting the importance of major leaders: Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and the Kennedys.

The first lecture was held at Swarthmore and was entitled “Dr. King and his Message 40 Years Later.” Vice President Maurice Eldridge ‘61 began the collection with a moment of silence before reading passages from Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and from a sermon delivered April 3, 1968.

Eldridge urged students to carry Tri-Co Peace Week well into the future and to “continue the annual, perennial search for justice in this world.”

Brandon Lee Wolff ‘08, the coordinator of Tri-Co Peace Week spoke after Eldridge, highlighting several of the weekend’s events.

He especially stressed the Rwandan dance performance later that night, an event that had been extremely popular in previous years.

Shilpa Boppana ’11 followed Wolff and introduced the speaker, Reverend Ralph Roy ’50. She emphasized his background in race relations, his education at Union Seminary, his time as a Freedom Rider and his relationship with Dr. King.

Boppana had interviewed Roy for The Daily Gazette as part of January’s Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration and “thought he had a great story and hoped to share it with the Swarthmore community.”

Reverend Roy began his talk with a recollection of the political climate of Swarthmore during his time as a student.

He shared an anecdote about Student Council passing a resolution suggesting women do not wear jeans to Sunday dinners. Roy recalled that the following Sunday forty or fifty women attended Sunday dinner in jeans as a form of protest.

Roy went on to discuss his experiences as the first white minister in a primarily-black church in Harlem and the weeks he spent as a Freedom Rider in a multi-racial, multi-denominational descent into some of the most racist communities in America.

He fondly recalled his meeting Dr. King for the first time, in a jail in Albany, Georgia.

Finally, he connected his experiences with Dr. King to his personal history, as a member of a small town in Vermont that had been invaded by Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. Roy said that he “considered the Civil Rights Movement the final battle in the Civil War.”

Roy stressed the importance of “how far we’ve come and how far we still must go.”

He also mentioned the strides that today’s young people have made in repudiating the racism of our parents’ generation.

An avid Obama fan, Roy addressed the race-driven comments recently made by the Democratic hopeful’s religious advisor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, during the question and answer session. He cited “white prejudice” and “black anger” as the two biggest hurdles to overcome to achieve racial unity, an achievement he is confident that our society can make.

Later that evening, Harris Wofford gave a talk entitled “Gandhi, King and the Kennedys — Now!” and led a subsequent discussion at Haverford College.

Wofford is possibly most famous for the time he served as a United States Senator for Pennsylvania from 1991 to 1995. He was also the former president of Bryn Mawr College.

However, it was his career as a civil rights lawyer, his experiences as unofficial advisor to Martin Luther King Jr., and his position as special assistant to President Kennedy on civil rights that he drew on for his talk.

Wofford began with a discussion on Gandhi and his role in the anti-violence movements of the last decade. He characterized Gandhi’s teachings as the “crux of our non-violent protests and demonstrations.”

He went on to describe his friendship with Dr. King. Both Wofford and Roy remember King as an intellectual man, devoted to his cause, but also devoted to laughter. Wofford poignantly remembered the conversations he and Dr. King had shortly before King’s assassination about the future of race relations.

Finally, Wofford recalled his time serving in the Kennedy administration and the relationship he cultivated with both Robert and John F. Kennedy. He called the Kennedys “harbingers of change” and emphasized their devotion to racial justice.

During the discussion that followed the talk, Wofford expounded on his work as a Civil Rights Lawyer during a time of political and racial upheaval.

Like Roy, Wofford supports Senator Obama in his bid for the Democratic nomination.

He had the opportunity to introduce Obama before his famous “A More Perfect Union” speech in Philadelphia, an honor that Wofford called “tremendous.”

Both speakers ended their respective events to standing ovations, boding well for this year’s Peace Week.

Eldridge found Reverend Roy “enthralling.” He said that he “was quite taken with him, impressed by his memory and his humility.”

Eldridge believes that events such as this are signs of Peace Week’s continued improvement and its potential as a long-lived Tri-Co tradition. He said that “in the beginning, it was Brandon,” referring to Wolff, Tri-Co’s principle coordinator.

Peace Week actually began when Wolff was still in high school and entered the “Peace Talks, Violence Walks” contest in hopes of preventing violence in schools such as Columbine. It originated as a two-day event for the 3,000 students of Council Rock North High School in Newtown, Pa.

By 2003, the event had expanded into a week-long celebration that encompassed the entire Council Rock School district.

Peace Week has now expanded to all of Bucks County and carries the tagline “Preventing Violence in our Schools and Communities.”

Once at Swarthmore, Wolff worked to charter his anti-violence group “Save ’R Us” and organize Peace Week. He said he was drawn to Swarthmore’s “willingness to start new organizations.”

The first Peace Week, which took place in 2005, held events exclusively at Swarthmore. By 2006, there were events at Bryn Mawr and Haverford. Although Wolff was excited to include the other Tri-Co schools, he noticed very few students attending events at other schools.

Peace Week 2007 saw the addition of several “Blue Busses,” planned around transporting students to events of interest at each of the three schools. This year’s major addition is the dedication of peace poles at both Swarthmore and Haverford.

These nine-foot structures bear the phrase “May Peace Prevail on Earth” in languages with history of conflict.

Wolff is especially excited about the prospect of leaving the peace poles as “something permanent for the schools that could be visited forty or fifty years later.”

One of the most important planning issues was the issue of timing.

Interestingly, Tri-Co Peace Week is always held the first week of April in order to encompass the anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination on April 4th and the anniversary of Rwandan genocide on April 6th. Eldridge hopes that these dates of international importance reflect the broad-base of issues addressed during this week. He said, “It’s not only about our immediate locale.”

Eldridge hopes that the tradition will continue well after Wolff leaves and is optimistic that Wolff responsibly delegated tasks. “It will be interesting to see the energy after Brandon leaves,” he said.

However, Eldridge believes that the event reflects important issues that aren’t “something you want to confine to a week” and hopes the dialogue will continue well beyond the week.

Tri-Co Peace Week still has several events left this week, most notably the State Radio Concert, a benefit concert for Philadelphia organization “Mothers in Charge” occurring Thursday at Swarthmore.

Also, Swarthmore’s Peace Pole dedication is happening Friday at 5:30 PM and will be preceded by a Peace Walk from Parrish to the site of the new Peace Pole. Finally, Peace Week concludes this Saturday night at Paces, with a sixties-themed Peace Party.

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