2018 Beloved Community Initiative (BCI) Essay Contest

In partnership with Dr. Virgil Wood, the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech and Virginia Union University, are pleased to announce the 2018 Beloved Community Initiative (BCI) Essay Contest.

This contest provides junior and senior students at high schools across Virginia the opportunity to explore exemplars of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s notion of the Beloved Community – a community based on social and economic justice and a common love for fellow human beings.
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Dr. King Jr. often thundered “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice,” quoting American Bards of generations gone. Dr. Woods life-long search for the elusive promised land of the American Dream led to the realization that at every point where the moral arc did bend, even ever so slightly, there stood a pair, or in some cases triplets, of Black and White ancestors of the Beloved Community. Sometimes these ancestors were not contemporaries, but they can be linked by the spirit they exemplified.

Through this essay competition, we invite junior and senior students at high schools across Virginia to choose one set of ancestors, and prepare an in-depth exploration of those two (or three) persons focusing on how the legacy of their life’s journey came together to advance the Beloved Community. The essays must be submitted by 6pm, April 4, 2018.

For more information: https://www.spia.vt.edu/beloved-community-initiative/essay-contest/

DEADLINE: APRIL 4, 2018