From rapping to acting to speaking, students competed for the chance to win prize money Wednesday by representing the heroes of the Civil Rights Movement.
The Black History Month Multicultural Heroes Hall of Fame Case Competition, hosted by the Multicultural Business Program, or MBP, has developed into a unique competition to compare the work of Martin Luther King Jr. to other multicultural activists with similar ideologies, said Ernest Betts, the assistant dean for the MBP.
“It was important to us that students knew more about the history and more about the significant people around the world that (spent and dedicated) their lives to helping other people appreciate humanity,” he said.
With about one month to prepare, students were assigned a hero and given up to 10 minutes to present during the competition, said Darrell King, the senior associate director for MBP.
Although the competition is derived from a business case model — a well-researched presentation on a single group, individual or event — students were encouraged to be as creative as they please, he said.
“In the past we’ve had students who have (come in costume as) George Washington Carver … and we’ve also had some of the students include some of the rap styles,” he said.
This year, seven teams of three students competed for the winning spot and for $1,500. Not only did they compete for a prize, but each group earned knowledge about the many unspoken heroes that helped forward the Civil Rights Movement, said Angie Perkins, a finance freshman.
As of press time, the winners had not been announced.
Perkins and her team, the Freedom Fighters, based their presentation on the television newsmagazine “60 Minutes” and hosted their hero, José Rizal, as a guest on the show.
Other participants, such as supply chain management freshman Arunteja Annadatha and his team, the Reflective Perspectives, became motivated after researching their hero, Dorothy Height.
“Honestly, I didn’t even know Dorothy Height before this presentation, but what I learned about her was amazing,” he said. “She did so much for the Civil Rights Movement and nobody really knows about her.”
The contest pushed students to think outside of the box and educate themselves on history and how it relates to their generation, Betts said.
In the future, officials hope to spread the competition to other schools.
“Faculty can always do this kind of stuff (and) special speakers can also do this kind of thing, but it’s important also for your peers to see that it’s important to them,” he said.
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