MLK speaker urges audience to look ahead for King's vision

Grand Valley’s celebration of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. began at breakfast and continued through the evening January 18.

While the day’s events brought a time for many to reflect on King’s life, for keynote speaker Randal Pinkett, it also brought occasion to look ahead. Pinkett, founder, chair and CEO of BCT Partners of New Jersey, spoke to an afternoon audience in the Fieldhouse after participating in a silent march on the Allendale Campus, and was the evening speaker at Grand Rapids Community College.

“We don’t just march for the sake of marching,” Pinkett said. “It’s important to remember Dr. King’s life and legacy, but it’s much harder to look ahead at what his vision was and to see what’s possible in our own lives.”

Pinkett referenced Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” but then asked students this question: “What do you do when there is no road?” He said King’s life, while ordinary in some ways, continued to be shaped by events that made him a trailblazer (audio).

“It is this mindset of a trailblazer that shows the world what is possible,” said Pinkett, who continued, saying a trailblazer is much like an entrepreneur.

Pinkett told the crowd that life is like a road and that each person is on a new pathway (audio). He told students that in order to be trailblazers, they must remember what it was like to be a child, before being influenced by the world, when you believed you could do or be anything (audio).

He closed his speech by answering his own earlier question. “When there is no road, you make the road, or the road is made as one walks on it,” he said (audio). Pinkett is the author of two books, including “Campus CEO: The Student Entrepreneur’s Guide to Launching a Multimillion Dollar Business.” He earned five degrees, culminating in a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At the morning celebration in the Kirkhof Center, Jeanne Arnold, vice president for Inclusion and Equity, said the new addition of community breakfasts “were  just the beginning of changes as we expand the celebration of Martin Luther King.” She added that a planning committee will form in the spring to study how best to incorporate King’s legacy in academic programs, awards and community service projects.

The Kirkhof Center program was Webcast to a Loosemore Auditorium audience and then made available to Grand Valley’s regional centers and the Holland Meijer Campus (see streaming video below).