SOUTH SHORE YMCA

Honoring Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. with the City of Quincy

Posted: Jan. 20, 2020

South Shore YMCA members and staff joined alongside city officials and more than 150 residents at Quincy High School today for Mayor Thomas Koch’s Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast to honor the legacy of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his life’s work to bring about racial equality.

Keynote Joseph Finn, President & Executive Director of the Massachusetts Housing & Shelter Alliance and former Quincy City Councillor, spoke to the inequalities and discrimination that still exist in our communities today, and challenged us all to continue in Dr. King’s footsteps to serve our community with a shared goal of true equality for every citizen across every neighborhood.

Following the keynote address, music students from the South Shore YMCA Germantown Neighborhood Center encouraged everyone to pursue their own dreams of equality. Struggling to find a song that appropriately captured the message he wanted to convey, 17-year-old Jonathan Tan chose to perform an original song he wrote himself, “At the End of the Day.”

“Don’t look back in the dark you can be the one who lights the flame/Don’t let this world go down in silence/Use your voice don’t use the violence/Maybe we’ll all have a dream by the end of the day,” he sang.

Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch ended the celebration by encouraging all of us to find and understand what we have in common, “We have far more in common in this country than we have that divides us.”