"Love Over Hate" to Celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.

Salem’s “No Place for Hate” committee. Clockwise from the head of the table: Jeff Cohen, Jim Bostick, Fara Wolfson, Lucy Corchado, Joseph Amico, Allison Miller, Laura Assade, and David Epply. Photo: Alexandra Grayton

By Alexandra Grayton

An award-winning book. A t-shirt. But also, perhaps a sense of doing the right thing because they participated in an exercise of “love over hate.” That’s what the winners of the essay contest associated with Salem State University’s 26th Annual Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration will receive.

On December 2, Salem’s “No Place for Hate” Committee decided on the prizes for the top essay authors and discussed Ta-Nehisi Coates’ award-winning book, “Between the World and Me.”​“It’s an amazing book, I recommend it to everybody, not just those on the committee. It’s very complex in the sense that it looks at race on a different level than most books, just in terms of the construct of race, it’s a very unique book,” said committee member Fara Wilson.

Wilson was one of the eight members of the committee that gathered at 120 Washington St. in Salem, Massachusetts on December 2.

Sponsored by the city of Salem, the “No Place for Hate” Committee is “dedicated to promoting acceptance of diversity and combating discrimination” and is “dedicated to mobilizing citizens to challenge bigotry and to promote a prejudice-free community in which all people are respected, understood, and appreciated for their differences,” according to its website. Its primary goal is to support and educate residents on diversity-related issues and to help protect the promise of equal justice and civil rights for the members of the community. In the past, the committee has organized anti-bullying events and provided support for the LGBTQ+ community.

The 26th Annual Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration is a week-long celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. that will take place at Salem State University January 19-26, 2016. During this time, students and residents in Salem and surrounding towns will be invited to participate in the various events.

Author Toni Morrison recently said that Coates’ “Between the World and Me” should be a “reading requirement,” one member of the committee noted.

The book is an expansion of a letter Coates wrote to his son Samori when he was 15 years old explaining how to handle prejudice, cruelty and harassment from the police. As a novel it explores the history of his life as a memoir and analyzes the time in which he was brought up in Baltimore.

“This is a really profound book that really challenges peoples’ thinking,” committee chair Jeff Cohen said.

In addition to giving winners the Coates book, they will also get a t-shirt with the committee’s logo. The committee decided on a dark gray, mid V-neck, with a small white logo over the left pocket written in fraction form as “love over hate.” The shirt will also have the logo covering the entire back in white. The shirts will also be available to the public fot $20. At the committee’s previous meeting, members had not decided whether the selling price should be $20 or $25.. Bostick was the deciding factor of the group in favor of charging only twenty.

“I can tell you from selling my artwork that $20 is a good, single, even bill that people can take out of their wallet. When you go to $25, they look for change and breaking bills, and it can be a decision maker,” he said.

Wicked Books will be selling the shirts as well as “Between the World and Me.”

In addition to giving these novels as prizes, the committee is also discussing sending these books to the city’s two libraries.

To find out more information about the celebration, check http://www.salemstate.edu/mlk_celebration/ or contact diversity@salemstate.edu or call (978) 542-2404.

“No Place for Hate” Committee meets the first Tuesday of every month on the third floor of 120 Washington St, Salem, MA at 5:30 p.m. Information regarding the committee can be located on their website http://www.salem.com/no-place-hate-committee, or through the Committee’s Mayor’s Office Liaison Laura Assade at (978) 619-5601 or by e-mail.