Excellence doesn’t have a color.
Killeen ISD Board President Brett Williams told students at Rancier Middle School Thursday that it was leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. who blazed a trail so that people like him would be recognized for their merit.
He urged students to seek out mentors who they could touch, not just celebrities and figures from history.
Williams recalled his elementary school principal in Killeen, Alice Douse, an African-American, whose name is now enshrined on a KISD school.
He pointed out guests in the gym, the mayors of Killeen and Nolanville, city council representatives and other leaders who are African-American.
Across KISD, schools have celebrated culture and heritage during Black History Month.
On Thursday, Pathways Academic Campus students conducted a taste test of soul foods a week after they competed in a Black History Month quiz bowl.
Rancier, Live Oak Ridge and Patterson middle schools all conducted programs the last day of February.
“Excellence doesn’t have a color. Excellence is an action,” said Williams.
“From day one when I walked into kindergarten, I saw someone who looked like me,” the school board president said of Douse. He also mentioned his first youth football coach, who was Black.
“When you look for heroes…you need to find someone you can touch.”
Killeen Mayor Debbie Nash-King said the city’s strongest attribute is its diversity. “It is our strength, and it is also our hope,” she said at the Rancier assembly.
The school’s band, cheerleaders and dance team performed. The Hay Branch Elementary School step team performed. A group of faculty dressed like famous African-American figures and read brief bios for students to guess their identity.
Live Oak Ridge Middle School used its Black History Month event to highlight African-American scientists and engineers.
Students recited facts about eight different contributors to science to begin the evening presentation.
Those included chemists Marie Maynard Daly and Alice Ball, physicist Herman Branson, biologist researcher Jewel Plummer Cobb, astronaut Guion Bluford and ophthalmologist Patricia Bath and physician Rebecca Lee Crumpler.
The choir and band performed, as well as the Diamonds dance team. Students also took part in a fashion show that cycled through the decades from the 1920s to today.
The NAACP presented student winners of the organization’s recent Black History quiz show.
