In the News

“We have a vision of the YW serving as a hub for all kinds of groups conducting community service and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was a good day to work on some of that, gather volunteers and then disperse them through the community.”

After the service projects were finished, Pottstown High School alum (class of 2000) and current high school history teacher Matt Reid outlined some of the ways he teaches his students at Upper Merion High School about King and the Civil Rights era.

“I explained to my students about ‘respectability politics,’ about how dressing well was how “black people were supposed to interact, for them to ‘stay in their lane,’ but Dr. King did not stay in his lane,” Reid told the crowd of about 30 people.

He quoted King’s daughter Bernice, who is very active on social media working to protect her father’s true legacy, who posted that respectability does not protect protesters anymore. “My father died in a suit,” she posted and Reid recounted.

Social media has not only broadened the reach of efforts to expand peace and justice for all — referring to the war in Gaza, Reid noted “This is the first generation that is recording its own genocide. It used to be easier to hide that kind of thing” — he said it can also make things more dangerous for young people speaking out.

“That’s why Dr. King used to have children march because it was much harder to hate a child, but we can’t do that anymore. That’s why I try to create a safe space in my classroom for young people to speak up and speak their minds,” said Reid.

Reid, who has taught at Pottstown Middle School, as well as schools in Philadelphia, Wissahickon and the Devereux School, grew up in what is now called the Bright Hope community in Pottstown. “But we all still call it Penn Village.”

He said “I never intended to be a teacher, but after my first year at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, I came home and I was in Barth Elementary School and I saw what (teacher) Kelli Wolfel was doing in the classroom and I said ‘that’s what I want to do.'”

In his classes, Reid — who teaches humanities classes on American Culture, and African American studies and next year will teach an AP class on that subject — said he not only teaches his students about King’s history but his methods and how they can use those methods to pursue social justice in their lifetimes. He sets up student panels that are run by the students, so they know how to take responsibility for and ownership of the issues they care about.

The more than 50 people who attended the program at the senior center learned more about King by singing some of his favorite hymns as well as taking turns sharing some of King’s more famous quotes.

U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-4th Dist., was among those in attendance.

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