Members of City Year Detroit, an AmeriCorps program in which young people sign up for a year of community service and mentoring, teamed up with 650 students and other volunteers at 13 projects across the region.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm, whose daughter Cecelia, 19, is a City Year volunteer in New Orleans, said at a morning rally that the day's message is that it's within everyone to make change in their communities.

"Truly, the greatest acts of courage and change have been from the most unexpected places," Granholm said.

Among the programs was a spruce-up and mural painting at Detroit's Osborn High School by members of City Year, the United Way of Southeastern Michigan, students and others.

Young volunteers also put together bags of toiletries for Freedom House, a Detroit group that provides temporary shelter for refugees.

Eunique Worthy, 12, of Detroit said she was glad to help make the kits, which included soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste and other necessities, and to learn that something so simple could be of help to people in Haiti who might emigrate to metro Detroit to escape the earthquake damage.

A friend's memories

The keynote speaker at Southfield's 25th annual Peace Walk Celebration to honor King was the son of the late Ralph Abernathy, widely considered King's closest friend.

Kwame Abernathy, 38, of Atlanta said his father was just 26 and King 29 when they organized the historic bus boycott in 1955 after Rosa Parks' arrest for sitting in the whites-only section of a bus.

"They went door to door on a Friday night to ask all blacks to protest her arrest by not riding buses on Monday. The word spread like wildfire," Abernathy said.

"For 381 days, no one (who was African American) rode the bus in Montgomery, Ala. Through rain, darkness, people organized car pools, did whatever they needed to do to not ride the bus ... and that's how the modern civil rights movement got started."

Abernathy said his father and King were "jailed together over 60 times." He said their churches and homes were bombed. And Ralph Abernathy was "on the balcony during the assassination, rode in the ambulance ... signed the death certificate and officiated at the funeral of Dr. King."

He said they were "special men (who) answered their calling when the alarm rang" in 1955.

"Will you answer the call when the alarm rings?"

Holding on to King's beliefs

"Hold On," they sang in multipart harmony, recreating a spiritual that consoled slaves in antebellum days.

The song, performed by the Achievers Ladies Ensemble from Detroit School of Arts, enchanted a crowd of 170 people gathered for a breakfast to kick off the 10th annual celebration of King Day at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.

The song tells how slaves labored during the backbreaking work of tilling soil, holding on tightly to the plow and a faith that better times waited.

"That's what Martin Luther King did. He held on and made it through for us," said Keyandra May, 16, a Detroit School of Arts junior.

The Rev. J. Drew Sheard of Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ in Detroit challenged Americans to refocus on achievement rather than status, commenting that some young men would rather be noticed for hanging shiny jewelry "around their necks, but not a diploma on their walls." And he scolded lax and highly sexualized behavior in society.

"I know we marched for freedom," said Sheard. "Is this the type of freedom he envisioned?"

Remembering the struggle

Dreams, scribbled on cutout paper white doves, adorned a board at the Farmington Community Library on Monday.

"Peace on Earth." "May all have food, water, shelter and love!" "Civility!"

In celebration of King, more than 150 people marched a short distance Monday from Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Farmington Hills to the library for a program of performances and speeches.

For Curtis Higgins, 15, of Canton, the action of marching was a way to recognize the civil rights struggles.

"It shows that you ... actually care a lot and you believe in the things that he said," Higgins said.

A march in tribute

Several hundred people gathered Monday morning outside King High School in Detroit for the school's first annual Tribute March.

As the school band played "We Shall Overcome" and King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech blared from large speakers, hundreds walked on a 2.3-mile route around the school.

Justyce Morton, 8, held a sign: "The legacy lives." Her mother, Kenthia Morton, of Detroit said her son's sign means, "we have followed through on Martin Luther King's dream, where we can all be united and equal."

The march was the idea of Deborah Jenkins, who has been the school's principal for five months. "I couldn't understand why we had a school named after Dr. Martin Luther King and we didn't have a march emanating from here in Detroit," Jenkins said. "I'm trying to educate and unify our young people, so they understand that you don't have to resolve conflict with violence."

Staff writers Bill Laitner, Patricia Montemurri, Gina Damron and Jeff Seidel contributed to this report.

Labels: InTheNews, Volunteering