Continuing the Work of Martin Luther King Jr.

Assistant Public Affairs Officer Christy Doherty talks to students at Donabate Community School.

Donabate Community School Learn about American Civil Rights Movement

Transition year students studying U.S. history at Donabate Community College enthusiastically attended a presentation by Deputy Public Affairs Officer Christy Doherty on the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.  The presentation used iconic black and white photographs of the segregated South, footage from the PBS documentary “Freedom Riders,” and YouTube clips of Martin Luther King Jr., President Lyndon B. Johnson, and President Barack Obama.  Students asked insightful questions about white participation in the protests, the Black Power movement, and violence against African Americans in the U.S. today.

After the presentation, Evun Connolly exhibited  a U.S. flag with 13 stripes and 13 stars, deriving from soon after American independence, and told the story of his great, great, great-grandmother’s emigration to the United States.  The flag dates from 1800 and the stars are in the pattern commonly associated with Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and not the more well-known Betty Ross pattern.  The flag has been passed down in the family since the 1830s.

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