For nearly 30 years, the Northwest Arkansas MLK Council has been the standard-bearer for how to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth month in the region. This year's celebration will kick off with the 27th annual Recommitment Celebration on Jan. 14, awarding scholarships and honors to community leaders and members who have affected positive change locally. The theme this year is "Disruptive Love," and the featured speaker will be Dr. Cornel West, esteemed philosopher, author, speaker and actor.
"In the history of the event -- 27 years -- this is the first time we've welcomed a nationally recognized speaker," says the Council's president, Lindsey Leverett-Higgins. "I think he is going to challenge us. And as we think about all of the work that has happened in the last couple of years, relative to diversity and inclusion in Northwest Arkansas, we're ready for it. I think he's going to say some things that are going to be very thought provoking, that will really encourage us to think about who we are and how we act, as we decide on what our priorities are for 2023."
But, says Leverett-Higgins, the large January celebration is far from the only thing the Council offers the community.
"I'm just so proud of the progress that we've been able to make as an organization, and I'm especially proud of some of the things that we've done over the past couple of years, in terms of increasing our footprint in the local community," she notes. "During the pandemic, we were instrumental in helping to bring covid vaccination drives and covid testing to the African American community in Northwest Arkansas -- of course, it was open to anyone. We've focused on community conversations about issues that are impacting communities of color -- like the role of the Black church in the community. We had another really exciting conversation around minority entrepreneurs.
"Even in the middle of the pandemic, we did not stop. People in our community had needs, and we were able to service and to meet some of those needs and have necessary conversations."
"You can turn on the news and see that we still have more work to do," says Helena Gadison, who is being honored at the Recommitment Celebration this year. "You can look within your communities and your schools, your churches, and see that we're making progress, but we're still not quite there. The Council is that entity that's charged to keep us committed to Dr. King's desire of love and action for everyone."
Read on for more information about the 2023 Salute to Greatness Award recipients.
Lifetime Achievement Award
The Dr. John L Colbert Lifetime Achievement Award is given in recognition of an individual who has attained merit while enhancing the advancement of his/her community. It honors Lorie Huff.
Surely math is not an easy subject to teach -- it's often one of the most challenging subjects for students -- but educator Lorie Huff has dedicated 37 years of her life to ensuring mathematical success to Fayetteville Public School students. Huff started as a classroom teacher, moved to district coach, and, in 2021, was appointed K-12 mathematics director.
Huff is "highly qualified and [is] respected across the state for [her] expertise and contributions to K-12 education," said FPS Superintendent John L Colbert when Huff was appointed, adding that she would "provide the tools and resources to support personalized learning, student growth, and a springboard for continuous improvement."
Huff was elected to the board of directors of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in 2018.
"I love to help others understand and love mathematics," she says of her chosen career. "I have never been content with the status quo, and I am always seeking ways to better understand, improve, and promote instructional best practices.
"My colleagues would say that I do not hesitate to justify the importance of mathematics. They know that I will defend mathematics no matter where I am and to anyone I meet."
Huff further contributes to her community by serving on the board of the Friends of the Yvonne Richardson Community Center, an organization located in south Fayetteville whose purpose is to "provide a place of structured recreation, socialization and extracurricular learning."
Individual Achievement Award
The Ernestine White-Gibson Individual Achievement Award is given to an individual who has given to his/her community through service, leadership and commitment. It honors Helena Gadison.
By any metric, Helena Gadison has had an incredible business career: Before taking on a senior sales role for Conair LLC in 2019, she held leadership positions with Lane Bryant and traveled to more than 25 different countries in her role as Walmart vice president for International Apparel Merchandising. It might be a surprise, then, to know that, in addition to being skilled at business, she's also a talented musician, vocalist and stage performer. Gadison started studying the cello in fifth grade and would later perform with the Tulsa Youth Symphony, the University of Arkansas, and the Northwest Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. She was a vocal soloist at Walmart founder Sam Walton's memorial service and could be found on the University of Arkansas theater stage while studying there.
"The word that I use about my leadership style, my speaker style, is 'multifaceted'," Gadison explains. "And a word that I really like is 'multipotentiality', or 'multipotentialite'. That's not a word that you hear people say all the time, but a multipotentialite means being multifaceted."
Her embrace of this mutlipotentiality, she says, is what attracted her to first volunteering for the United Way. Today, she serves as the chairman of the board for the Northwest Arkansas branch of the organization.
"The United Way aligns with my personality and my approach of being multifaceted -- they're involved in not just one thing," she says. "[We made an announcement] earlier this year that we would award $1.9 million in grants to over 30 different nonprofit organizations across various categories. That money stays right here in the community."
When she was elected chairman, she was the first woman and the first Black person to hold the position since the board was formed in 1931. It wasn't the first time Gadison broke through that wall; in 2019, she became the first Black person named to the Fayetteville Chamber Board of Directors. Such hard-fought achievements help others succeed, something that's important to her.
"My mom taught me a long time ago that supporting others and giving back is just what we do," she says. "I have a favorite Scripture that I share with my family and others. It's Luke 12:48: 'To whom much is given, much is required.' When I give back, I think it adds substance and purpose to my life. It's bigger than myself."
Youth Award
The Rodney Momon Youth Award is given in recognition of a youth or young adult who has exemplified strong character, leadership, and service to the community. It honors Michael Day.
Michael Day can pinpoint the exact moment he figured out his career trajectory. He was a teenager, already fascinated by music and music videos, but he hadn't yet crystallized that passion into a vocational path.
"It was when I watched 'Boyz n the Hood', directed by John Singleton," remembers the Little Rock native, who now lives in Rogers. "I had never related so much to antagonists in a movie before -- being a kid and in a troubled neighborhood, just trying to do the right thing. When I saw that movie, I thought, 'Yeah, I think I want to be a filmmaker.'"
Today, Day is the founder of production company Dayvision LLC and is a recipient of a 2021 Artists 360 grant. His 2018 documentary, "Buy Back the Block," a study of the economic and generational destruction wrought when highway systems dissect Black communities, has been seen in film festivals across the country. His newest project, the web series "The Sextons," is a seriocomic look at the struggles of new parents. Season II is in the works.
"We're making sure that we tell stories that give Black creators a platform to express their true, authentic selves. When I align that with my values -- with God, with my Christian-based faith, the sky's the limit. So it's an honor."
Day says could not have reached this level of success without his support systems -- in addition to God and his faith, he honors the other primary supports in his life.
"I do want to shout out my mom and dad who actually planted the seed in my head that I can help my community with just my faith and dreams," he says. "And my beautiful wife, who is the reason I'm able to move forward and pursue filmmaking. Without those pillars, I would be nowhere."
Posthumous Award
The Rev. J.A. Hawkins Posthumous Award is given in recognition of a person whose life and service had a positive impact on the community. It honors John Newman.
Artist John Newman discovered a gift for fine arts when he was still in elementary school -- a gift so significant, it later earned him a scholarship to the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio. After graduation in 1970, he was drafted into the Army, where he served as a military policeman. Once a civilian again, Newman embarked on a fascinating span of careers that would include a second degree, a stint at Hallmark Cards, and a long and esteemed tenure as a teacher, during which he impacted the lives of students ranging from middle school to college. He taught from 1990 until his retirement in 2013 at the University of Arkansas, where he was awarded multiple prestigious awards.
"My first introduction to my dad as an art teacher was at a high school," says daughter Jamila Newman. "The high school he taught at was predominantly Black. Often, when you think of the fine arts world, those are not the faces you think about. But I was seeing kids with huge, high top fades, tilted to the side or Jheri curls or Jordan Flight Suits. Those were the first artists I saw outside my father. It really began to expand my world -- 'Who is the artist, who has the power to create art, who has the power to shape art and critique it?' I never felt as if those were exclusionary spaces, because I was always surrounded by artists who looked and sounded and talked like my dad and my mom."
From the beginning, Newman's work was infused with the political and social issues of the day. Take, for example, his series about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which was exhibited at Mullins Library on the UA campus. Newman said his goal was to "describe the plight of people uprooted from their comfort zones and plunged into life or death situations," and he did so through haunting scenes of community members wading through chest-high water, waiting for rescue, and, in one particularly tragic piece, slipping off of a roof into roiling flood waters. An image of a single unarmed Black man being held at gunpoint by a group of seven white men is ironically titled "New Orleans Police, Restoring Security."
Jamila says being raised with such weighty issues as common threads of conversation was a gift.
"I think my parents also showed an intense interest in me and my brother, in our lives and our ideas," she says. "We never had a kid table and an adult table -- we were always together, always talking. They really valued curiosity about the world, asking questions and learning. Growing up in that kind of environment, not only as a child, but also as a black woman, in particular -- where our voices have not often been centered -- was just a tremendous kind of fertile soil for me to grow and mature in."
Newman passed away on Feb. 11, 2022. Jamila says the outpouring of love towards him after his death gave her a better view of how widespread his appeal and influence actually were.
"The variegated, expansive nature of the people who reached out, were just such an indication to me of how open and willing he was to share his craft with anyone," she says. "And that he truly believed that art is for everyone. And it is not exclusionary. It's a way to be ultimately inclusive and invite other people in."
Organization of the Year
The Organization of Year Award is given in recognition of a corporation or organization that has donated time, effort and financial assistance to the upgrading of the community. This year, that organization is the Squire Jehagen Outreach Center at the Historic St. James Missionary Baptist Church.
The church first started expanding its community food pantry in 2019, when the organization's director of outreach, Monique Jones, saw a need for food assistance that went beyond the blessing bags she and the church's congregation had been assembling and distributing to the unhoused population of Fayetteville. At the beginning, says Pastor Curtiss Smith, the church was supporting around 40 families a week.
Jones' decision to expand to help more people seemed shockingly prescient just a year later, when so many Northwest Arkansas community members found themselves struggling economically due to the covid-19 pandemic. Today, the pantry serves around 3,000 families a month.
"Northwest Arkansas is usually seen as a wealthy part of the state -- but when you look around, you'll see that there's a lot of poverty that's here," says Smith. "We sought out those that were impoverished and tried to meet their needs."
"We serve people from Centerton to Lincoln to West Fork, to Elkins -- even from Harrison," says Jones. "I'll ask, 'Why here?' They'll say, 'We don't have a lot of food, and we've heard that your pantry provides protein, produce, good fruit and vegetables, bread, and sometimes eggs and milk.'"
This past November, Jones says the line for Thanksgiving dinner was so long, the Pantry, which was scheduled to close at 1 p.m., stayed open until 2:30 p.m. She had no idea if the turkeys would last and made a point of warning those that were waiting in line that they could run out before they were served. The Pantry had 500 turkeys to hand out; when the last car pulled away, they had two left.
"It was like fishes and loaves -- everybody got a turkey, everybody got canned goods and breads and desserts," says Jones. "I don't know where it came from, but it just kept multiplying."
Jones never stops looking for more ways to help -- future plans include expanding the delivery area, adding more volunteers to help fill out SNAP applications, expanding both the summer food program and fall backpack program, and installing food lockers for those who can't make it to the pantry during regular business hours. As hard as she works, she says she couldn't keep the Pantry running without the help of the St. James congregation and the volunteers that flock to the Pantry from all over Northwest Arkansas.
"Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Everybody can be great, because everyone can serve,'" says Jones. "And one thing that I hold great pride and honor in is that we open our door to anyone and everyone that wants to come and serve this community. We have people that served alongside us that may be agnostic or atheist or Methodist or Baptist or Catholic, are Mormon, are homeless, or they just got out of jail. If they want to be great, they can be great right alongside me. No one holds a title when we're here during the day trying to get the food boxes out to the community."
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