Approximately 125 people marched from Thomas Hall to the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Monday night.

About 200 people gathered in the University Ballroom after the march to honor and remember King in a ceremony.

Will Bumphus, a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, welcomed the large audience to the ceremony and asked them to honor Dr. King and all those who struggled for peace.

A prayer and a letter that Dr. King wrote while in jail was then read by Roy Lanham of the Newman Catholic Center.

When Tony Muse, the master of ceremonies, stepped up to the podium he said, “We hope to test your comfort levels.”

Subsequently, he asked everyone to get up and and find a new seat next to someone unfamiliar.

Holding hands, Courtney Johnson, a graduate student in the Family and Consumer Sciences field, and Monique Cook-Bey, assistant director of Student Life, then proceeded to sing the Black National Anthem.

The EIU Unity Gospel Choir, which consists of nine students accompanied by a drummer and a pianist, performed two selections that motivated the audience to sing and clap.

A short video of civil rights leaders and protesters in the 1960s was presented to show how badly African-Americans were treated and how hard they struggled.

After the movie, Muse, a senior business management and marketing major, commented that the people depicted in the video “kept their eyes on the prize and their heads up.”

The keynote speaker for the program was John Coffey, dean of the College of Education and Professional Studies. The three main points of his speech were the past, the present and the future.

Coffey spoke about King and his past, noting that King was a husband, father, preacher and someone who led a movement that transformed the world today.

Coffey also said that in the present we need to know “where we are and what we are doing.”

For the future, we need to have motivation and goals, Coffey commented.

“The bottom line is,” he said, “you need to have a story to tell.”

At the end of the program, Muse gave the audience the opportunity to ask questions and make comments.

Cook-Bey was very pleased with the good turnout for both the march and the ceremony.

“Each year it gets bigger and better,” Cook-Bey said.