News & Events 2003-2004

Anthony D’Amato ’06 Receives Essay Contest Award from Princeton University

Anthony D’Amato ’06 was awarded third place in the Princeton University Martin Luther King Day Committee’s essay contest. Anthony’s entry was among 443 entries in this essay category. He received his award at a ceremony at Princeton on January 19, attended by his parents and brother Nick, a 2001 graduate of Blair Academy and a student at Princeton. His essay follows:

Earlier in the year, I visited the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. There is a message in that museum that can be heard loud and clear, and it is one the world needs to heed. In a museum built within the very hotel in which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, the idea of a positive change in society through non-violence is everywhere you turn.

The struggle for civil rights of African Americans goes back hundreds of years in America. By the middle of the last century, the situation had become untenable. When African-Americans took a stand for themselves in the 1950’s and 60’s, there were many ways they could have chosen to quickly and violently get their point across, from street riots to destructive rampages. But Dr. King and other leaders of the movement knew that kind of behavior would not be productive. Non-violent protests brought their plight to the sympathetic eyes of the world. The African Americans’ ability to respond to their mistreatment without violence put them on a higher moral ground than their oppressors. Were Dr. King preaching sermons threatening death and destruction, there would have been no sympathy. How can one have sympathy for a people creating chaos? Violence, in turn, leads to more violence. There is no escaping this principle in the world today.

An example of this is the Israel-Palestine conflict, which has spread violence throughout the Middle East and all over the globe. The Palestinian people feel oppressed and confined. Caught in a conflict over their land and civil rights, the Palestinian people reached a breaking point, but in all the wrong ways. The Intifadah has only perpetuated the situation, with the violence only leading to more violence. So the Palestinians are left trying to free themselves from their squalid state of affairs, but where is the international sympathy? Where is the moral support for these oppressed peoples? It is hard to come by, when their protests are as violent as they are. Much of the world feels no sympathy toward a suicide bomber who kills women and children in a crowded marketplace. Consequently, there is little moral outrage when the Israelis crack down, killing innocent Palestinians. Again, violence only leads to more violence.

So I suggest that the policy-makers in Washington pay a visit to Memphis and spend a little time thinking about what they see and hear. There is a lesson to be learned. That lesson is that it is gravely more important to export to the rest of the world the lessons of nonviolence and the hopes of world peace, rather than simply billions of dollars worth of military hardware.

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