Carrboro celebrates Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with annual youth-led event

People of all ages and backgrounds gathered at the Carrboro Century Hall on Saturday to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. with a teen-led event. 

The celebration was organized by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Youth Council in partnership with the Carrboro Youth Council and Youth Advisory Board. The event featured a few student speakers from each organization. 

One speaker was Vianna Fornville, a tenth-grader who joined the NAACP in the third grade and who’s served as the CH-Carrboro NAACP Youth Town Council secretary for the past two years. 

In her speech, she said she was recently accepted into the Disney Dreamers Academy, an educational mentorship program. She was one of only four students selected from the state of North Carolina. 

She drew the connection between the name “Dreamers Academy” and King's “I Have a Dream Speech.” 

“I'm the dreamer,” Fornville said. “Learning about MLK, about my whole life, his mindset, and how he's impacted the whole world, it felt like, wow, his words have led me to this point.”

In the spirit of King, the Carrboro Youth Council presented a video featuring interviews with Chapel Hill High School students about their dreams for the future. 

Each person’s dreams were different; some were career goals and others were academic ambitions, but all were bold. 

The teens also created a Kahoot quiz game with questions about King, asking audience members trivia questions — like the name of his first book, “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story.” 

The quiz stirred some friendly competition, and the top three with the highest scores each won a book from Golden Fig Books related to the Civil Rights Movement. 

While fun, the quiz also educated participants on some of Carrboro’s history, like the fact that it was not until 1966, 12 years after Brown v. Board of Education, that Frank Porter Graham Elementary School was integrated.  

“[King's] holiday, and holidays such as Black History Month — it's an opportunity to really pay attention to and just really think about where we are, where we need to go,”  said Anita Jones-McNair, Carrboro’s chief race and equity officer, after the event. 

Carrboro Mayor Barbara Foushee, who is the first Black woman to be mayor of the town, closed out the event with a speech calling on the youth to lead the future. 

“Freedom is never really won; you earn it and win it in every generation,” she said, quoting Coretta Scott King. “So the young people, you got it next,” Foushee added. 

Viola Ahmed, the president of Carrboro’s Youth Council, embraced the role of change maker. 

“The youth council, and especially the NAACP Youth Council, we bring youth voices to the community, and we actually work with local government,” Ahmed said.   

One of the recent projects the Youth Council worked on with the town was securing a teen space in the Drakeford Library Complex that will open soon. 

“The reason why we got that addition to the library is because our youth council spoke up,” she said. 

The mission of the NAACP Youth and College Division is to create a "courageous generation of intelligent, militant and effective youth leaders creating a world for all people to thrive,” according to its website. 

Kennedy Lytle, a tenth-grader and head chair of publicity for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP Youth Council, said she found community within the council and encouraged others to join. 

Middle and high schoolers interested in joining the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP Youth Council and Carrboro’s Youth Council can visit their websites online. 

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