Kids to Celebrate Dr. King’s Birthday at Westport Historical Society

The Westport Historical Society will
celebrate Martin Luther King Day with a program on Jan. 20 for children aged 5
to 12 to learn about the civil rights leader and how he inspired a Westport artist to become
involved in the battle for racial equality.

The program will run from 10 a.m. to 2
p.m. and will also include yoga
instruction, as well as an opportunity to engage in dramatic role play with
actress Jennifer Devine from Westport’s Musical Theater Center.
 Elizabeth DeVoll, the Westport
Historical Society’s education director, will show the children how to make
peace globes from ‘60s news articles and photos, peace symbols, friendship
rings and hand-stitched samplers with peace quotations.

Tracy Sugarman, the Westport artist who
was inspired by Dr. King, went on to write three books about his experiences in
mid-1960s Mississippi, where young “Freedom Riders” from the North helped black
Mississippians register to vote.

His widow, Gloria Cole Sugarman, will
be the featured speaker at the Jan. 20 program. That day is also the first
anniversary of Sugarman’s death, at age 91, at his Compo Beach home.

Gloria Sugarman said Tracy
was present in 1964 when Dr. King spoke at Temple
Israel in Westport and urged residents not to “sit out
the revolution.”

Tracy, who would go to Mississippi and document the Freedom Summer
of 1964 as a journalist and illustrator, later said that Dr. King “changed my life.”

Gloria
Sugarman was herself a journalist and head of Westport’s World Affairs Centers, which
sponsored human rights and anti-war activities. She and Tracy met at the World Affairs
Center and married many
years later.

A snack
will be provided, but kids are asked to bring a lunch and wear stretchy
clothes. 

To
register for the Martin Luther King Day program at the Westport Historical
Society call (203) 222-1424.

Cost:  $45 for members, $55 for non-members.
Additional siblings are $10 off.