Emerly Reed won the Tomorrow's Leaders middle school essay contest. Kemal Gasper, vice president of community engagement for VyStar Credit Union, presented Emerly with a trophy for winning the competition during the 37th annual Martin Luther King breakfast at the Prime Osborn Convention Center on Friday, Jan. 12, 2024. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today
Published on January 12, 2024 at 5:57 pm
The Civil Rights Movement did not often incorporate the voices of Black women in public. Nevertheless, three Jacksonville girls found inspiration in the fight for equality.
Their belief that the power of words to evoke peace as well as the potential for this community were shared with an audience of more than 2,000 Jaxsons on Friday morning during the 37th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast inside the Prime Osborn Convention Center.
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Kameilya Reed, Emerley Reid and Nia Philip all have big smiles, big words and big aspirations. The three girls won the VyStar Tomorrow’s Leaders essay competition.
Kameilya, a fifth grader, shared how she was bullied at a previous elementary school. She knows a society cannot allow social media to drive away the love and light that are within communities.
Nia is a sophomore at Paxon School of Advanced Studies who noted that the world King changed is different from today, but the Atlanta preacher’s message was timeless.
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“To me, it almost made me feel like a leader,” Nia said. “I felt everybody listening to me, especially afterward when people were thanking me for what I have done and the words that I said. It made me feel like my opinion mattered. And, it was an amazing feeling.”
Afterward, Nia’s parents and Emerley’s parents conversed with the pride of knowing their daughters brought a collection of CEOs, cops, educators, bankers, clergy, politicos and ordinary Jaxsons to their feet.
Friday was the first time in eight years that the city’s government, business leaders and civil rights organizations celebrated King at the same time and in the same space. For the previous five years, the Jacksonville Branch of the NAACP held a separate breakfast.
While the leaders of the NAACP, Urban League and Mayor’s Office might not always agree, they were often in sync nodding and smiling as the Tomorrow’s Leaders winners recited their speeches Friday morning.
Emerley stressed the importance of seeing the humanity in others at all times because “each second spent hating is a second wasted.” The 13-year-old at the LaVilla School of the Arts challenged her community to wonder what it would be like to live in a world without malice, hate or cruelty.
“Behind everything you see, there is a person,” Emerley told Jacksonville Today. “That’s why you have to be mindful with our words. We can’t only think about ourselves. We have to think about others feel. When see someone going through something — or we might not know they are going through something — you have to put yourself in their situation and say ‘What would it be like if I were them?’”
Emerley says she was honored to carry on King’s legacy. She says King is an example that one person can change their community.
King was assassinated in April 1968 hours after he told striking sanitization workers that he had seen the mountaintop. In his last words, King spoke of the need to bring colored people out of poverty, hurt and neglect. Six months later, the city of Jacksonville and Duval County government consolidated and made similar promises to Black residents here.
Friday, Jacksonville’s mayor noted that it’s been 20,191 days since consolidation “and still we have not fulfilled the promises made to our Black citizens.”
The message of the three leaders of tomorrow may have outlined a future more congruent with King’s dreams.
Nia says young leaders should take the opportunity to have their voice heard seriously.
“The elderly to young bond is what secures a prosperous future,” Nia said. “If we don’t take it serious enough, then when our elders are gone, and we are left to become elders, we are not going to know where we stand. We are not going to know where we need to go. We’re not going to be able to look back on anything if we’ve thrown it all away.”
Lead image: Emerly Reid won the Tomorrow’s Leaders middle school essay contest. Kemal Gasper, vice president of community engagement for VyStar Credit Union, presented Emerly with a trophy for winning the competition during the 37th annual Martin Luther King breakfast at the Prime Osborn Convention Center on Friday, Jan. 12, 2024. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today
