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YOUNGSTOWN -- The Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past organization is preparing events, activities and gatherings for Ohio Nonviolence Week that gets underway Sunday.
Nonviolence Week, which runs until Oct. 10, will begin with the 16th annual Nonviolence Parade and Rally, set for 3 p.m. Sunday at Wick Avenue and Wood Street, downtown. The parade will travel through the corridor to the Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre for a program. Those interested in registering for the parade can do so at www.ohiononviolenceweek.org.
Also part of the activities will be Chalk the Walk for Nonviolence opportunities today through Oct. 10 in which businesses, churches and schools are encouraged to have people use chalk to write words and draw pictures in front of their buildings that exemplify messages of nonviolence, kindness and peace.
Also in the mix is a five-day nonviolence reading challenge at noon Sunday to Oct. 8 at the YWCA of Youngstown, 25 W. Rayen Ave., downtown, which will conclude with a panel discussion at noon Oct. 9 based on the readings. Lunch will be at 11:30 a.m. Go to www.ohiononviolenceweek.org to sign up.
The Simeon Booker Award for Courage will be distributed during a program that begins at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Tyler History Center, 325 W. Federal St., downtown. This year’s local recipient is Marc Ellis, a third-grade teacher in the Youngstown City School District. The national recipient is attorney and activist Fred Gray of Tuskegee, Alabama.
Ellis has been instrumental in whetting his young students’ appetite to learn about the civil rights movement, social justice and tolerance via having them read age-appropriate books on the subjects. In addition, Ellis has brought figures such as Brown Trickey and the late Jo Ann Bland of Selma, Alabama, to his classroom to speak to his students.
Gray, 95, who also served as an Alabama legislator, represented Rosa Park during her famous Dec. 1, 1955, arrest in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s first civil rights lawyer and as a litigator in the 1956 Browder v. Gayle case, which ended racial segregation on Montgomery’s buses. The reception that will get underway at 5:30 p.m. at the Tyler History Center is $35 per person, but the program is free.
Nonviolence Week also will include a spoken word, “Speak Your Peace,” 5 to 7 p.m. Oct. 8 at First Presbyterian Church of Youngstown, 201 Wick Ave. This event is free.
A “Freedom First” jazz performance is set for 7 p.m. Oct. 9 at St. John’s Episcopal Church, 323 Wick Ave., which also is free.
The week will end with a conversation pertaining to the philosophy of nonviolence will take place at 1 p.m. Oct. 10 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Youngstown, 1105 Elm St., on the North Side.