Antioch Marches in LA’s 34th MLK Kingdom Day Parade
JANUARY 18, 2019, LOS ANGELES, BY M. GAFFNEY
2019 marked the first year that Antioch University marched as a group in LA’s 34th Kingdom Day Parade. Accompanying the group of faculty, staff, students, alums, and family members was a twelve-foot-tall puppet modeled on the image of the distinguished Coretta Scott King.
The parade is the largest and oldest of its kind in the country. The Antioch tradition, going back to Horace Mann’s founding of Antioch College in 1852 (of which Antioch University is offspring), is rooted in the spirit of rigorous progressive education, equality, and social justice… for ALL. Antioch College was one of the first to enroll African American students and to hire women faculty members. Coretta Scott King, a fierce advocate for human and civil rights, both in partnership with her husband, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and independently, was an alumna of Antioch College. She originally matriculated in 1945 as an Interracial Education Scholarship student, later receiving her degree in 1967.