For this year only, in celebration of the 50th anniversary, we are making a quilt as a community project. We warmly invite you to contribute a square of fabric that expresses something about MIT’s diversity and/or about MLK’s legacy! 

• The finished quilt will be displayed in Lobby 10 the week of February 12, 2024, and then sold via silent auction at the MLK Gala on February 17, 2024. 
• Auction proceeds to benefit a charity or other organization, chosen by popular vote from those who contribute squares.

Quilting circle dates

• Thursday, January 4, Noon-1:30pm, Rainbow Lounge (blg 50).
  Join us for a special session with Shava Nerad, a former MIT employee. Shava has offered to do some storytelling about what it was like being a child whose father was at Selma and other marches, and an organizer of local civil rights marches in rust-belt Wisconsin. Shava says:

  “My dad worked night security for the Salem-Montgomery march for Dr King and the SCLC, and was a union organizer in his younger years.  By the time I was born he was working on his divinity degree at Oberlin to become a Universalist minister, because the Universalists' focus on social justice in Cleveland had pulled him in.

  I sat on the floor in the living room and listened to my dad and his cronies talk media strategy, direct action and so on.  When I was four, I was on a local civil rights march.  A TV broadcaster picked me out as the safe interviewee:  the little white girl in the home-made corduroy pinafore.

  "Why are you here today, little girl?" he asked me.

  "I believe we need a more healing dialectic around race issues in this community," I told him, in my tiny piping voice.

  Dead air followed for a few lengthy seconds.  Remember, everything was live in those days.  At which point, I understand, the cameraman saved him by cutting to a commercial.”

  While you listen, we welcome you to decorate a square for the community quilt or help us stitch squares together! Supplies and instruction provided.

• Thursday, January 4, 5-6pm, Rainbow Lounge (blg 50). We still have some supplies for you to decorate a square for the community quilt! We will also be joining the squares together. Supplies and instruction provided.  
• Friday, January 5, Noon-1:30pm, Rainbow Lounge (blg 50). Joining the squares together. Supplies and instruction provided.  
• Monday, January 8, Noon-1:30pm, Rainbow Lounge (blg 50). Joining the squares together. Supplies and instruction provided. 
• Tuesday, January 9, Noon-1:30pm, Rainbow Lounge (blg 50). Joining the squares together. Supplies and instruction provided. 
• Tuesday, January 9, 5-6pm, Rainbow Lounge (blg 50). Joining the squares together. Supplies and instruction provided.  
• Wednesday, January 10, noon-1:30 pm, Rainbow Lounge (blg 50). Joining the squares together. Supplies and instruction provided.  

Please reach out to mlk-celebration@mit.edu with any questions.