Inside The Decision To Cancel The 2025 MLK Peace March
Image provided by Antonella Dominguez from 2024’s Peace March
Every January, Grace students spend a week considering the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, linking those struggles to modern fights for greater social, political, and economic equality. For the last two decades, a defining feature of Grace’s MLK programming was the Peace March. However, this year, the school administration canceled it in light of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, which took place during the same week.
Akbar Ali Herndon, our chief technology officer, has been deeply involved with Grace’s MLK programming for many years. He explained that initially, in 1994, an “assembly was the first MLK cornerstone.” The inaugural events had students “bring and create and share ways of celebrating [MLK’s] life, liberty, freedom, anything that brought human spirit to life.”
Historically, another defining feature of MLK week is the Peace March, where students walk from the lower school to Union Square, holding signs and posters advocating for greater equality and climate justice, among other pressing global challenges.
This became an indelible part of MLK week in the early 2000s, when, according to Dr. Ali Herndon, “one of the diversity directors at the time, Hillary North, suggested we use a march as a way of further expressing the ideas of what you might share on a sign.” In addition, the march allowed students “to experience the force and power that the civil rights workers were bringing to any situation by gathering together and moving through the streets.”
After the high school was founded in 2012, social justice symposia were added to the MLK programming in January 2016. Initially, these workshops were held on one day, but were subsequently expanded to three days. Symposia have delved into a number of topics, including the legal strategy of civil rights activists and the history of female presidential candidates.
In the past, the Peace March was mandatory for lower school students and optional for high schoolers. But after two decades, the school administration canceled it.
According to his recollection, Dr. Ali Herndon was the first to raise safety concerns in either October or November. Describing his thinking last fall, he had hoped the March would include both middle and high school students in “full force” this year.
In subsequent discussions with colleagues, Dr. Ali Herndon iterated safety issues surrounding a sizable student body of roughly 500: “The police precinct knows we have the march every year,” he said, “They sort of protect us. They help us with the crosswalk.” However, the greater number of people would make the police “give it a different kind of attention.”
At the same time, Jean-Robert Andre, Grace’s Director of Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging, described the school’s concerns surrounding President Trump’s inauguration, which took place the same week: “Given what we had experienced in the past couple of years … around the time of elections and unrest, we needed to ask hard questions about what it would be like to run our usual movement.”
Mr. Andre explained that the signs carried by students advocating for “queer identities, women’s rights, gender equity and equality, voting rights,” could have been perceived as a political protest, as these issues have become “charged conversations” in the current political landscape.
Of utmost concern, he identified a principal safety concern as “what happens if folks in the [outside] community that were marching through [interact] with the students in a way that is … a physical safety concern.”
From the lower school campus, Elizabeth Abrams, the Choral Director and a teacher in the Middle School’s Music Department, who has been intimately involved with MLK week during her decades at the school, illustrated how safety concerns in relation to Trump’s inauguration were the primary concern speculated by her and her colleagues. “It could have been that there would be people who saw it as a protest against the inauguration,” she said. “And might’ve … yelled negative things.”
Before coming to the final decision, Elsa Hepner, the Head of Middle School, described the process of canceling the march. “We talked through it in senior administration, which means every senior administrator,” she said, “to kind of gather a variety of perspectives.”
Ms. Hepner did not point to any opposition from middle school faculty. “They were all pretty much on board,” she recalled. “So then I came back to the group, and we decided that would ultimately be the decision.”
Similarly, Mr. Andre highlighted several conversations about the march. “There was very much a structured conversation, and then there were conversations among divisions if the march doesn’t exist, what do we do? What are we going to do instead?” he explained. “There was a long period of conversations that led up to when we were making communications around the peace program up through right before winter break.” According to him, Robert Pennoyer and Lorry Perry were at all administration meetings where this decision was discussed.
Reflecting on the decision to cancel the Peace March, Ms. Abrams described a deep sense of sadness. “The Peace March is just so beautiful,” she said. “I had to find solace in other things because that is really a beautiful moment to me—when we all stand in Union Square and sing, ‘We Shall Overcome.’”
Wilson Urist ‘27, the author, is a staff writer for The Grace Gazette.