Soul Children performance honors Martin Luther King Jr.

Music, smiles and the camaraderie of a shared joy was how the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was celebrated in Schaumburg Thursday night.

A rousing vocal performance by the world-traveling Walt Whitman and the Soul Children of Chicago was the centerpiece of the seventh annual dinner honoring King's memory by the Illinois Commission on Diversity and Human Relations.

The Soul Children of Chicago are talented school kids from the city's South Side who have learned and earned a deep discipline from both their art, and the strict academic requirements to stay eligible for the group.

"These are a group of folks that have torn down so many of the stereotypes that some people have created about some of God's children," said the Rev. Clyde Brooks, president of the Arlington Heights-based commission.

In a gold-paneled ballroom at the Hyatt Woodfield Hotel, the powerful, passionate voices of the Soul Children filled the air like a physical presence.

Community leaders from the Northwest suburbs were soon clapping their hands and waving lit-up cell phones and table candles in sync with the music.

From African hymns to traditional gospel to Hebrew songs the group learned in Israel, Whitman said this was music to inspire and help understand how King came to be the man he was.

"We're not here to talk about how bad it was, but about how good it's about to be," Whitman said.

"We hope you've enjoyed this different kind of celebration," Brooks told the crowd. "We want this celebration to be meaningful, but we want us all to be inspired to do better."

John Burgess, managing director of International Profit Associates in Buffalo Grove, said that despite the words written about equality and fairness in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, King was one of the few men to show America the way to the moral high ground on the world stage.