Candlelight march, keynote address for MLK week

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) - He had a dream and some Purdue students were on hand Thursday night to honor it.    

Dozens gathered at the Black Cultural Center on Purdue's campus for a candlelight march to honor the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The march is one of the many celebrating Dr. King's life this week on campus.

The event was organized by the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, the same fraternity that Dr. King was a member of.

"Dr. King has had such an impact on all of our lives still today," said Alpha Phi Alpha Chapter President Jonathan Blair. "Seeing that he is a member of our fraternity, we find it particularly important to continue his legacy and to honor him and recognize what he has done.

Students marched from the Cultural Center to Loeb Playhouse for the week's keynote address.

Introduced by President Mitch Daniels, the keynote speaker was Melissa Harris-Perry who hosts her own show on MSNBC on weekend mornings.

"The King holiday is always a busy time, a time of lots of lectures," Harris-Perry said. "But it's also an important time of reflection because it is this opportunity for us as a nation and as campuses to pause and say, 'What is the role of service and what is the role of diversity in who we are as Americans.'"

She believes that an upcoming Supreme Court case could be the end of affirmative action and so creativity will be needed to make sure that campuses like Purdue remain diverse. She said it's important to have diversity even in physical sciences like engineering because people of different backgrounds ask different questions.