In Celebration of William King...Another King in Honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. With Respect for All the Work He Does for His Students at Central

Last night I got to celebrate students, staff, faculty members, and community partners at the MLK, Jr. Vision Awards at Fairfield University. I was especially grateful to see Dr. Jessica Alicea, Coach Carley Thibaul, and CWP teacher leader as 2026 recipients and, once again, CWP-Fairfield was proud to provide scholarships and book awards to the 4 essay contest winners. 

Here is the letter I wrote in support of Mr. King...so wonderful to have friends present and to see family, both on King's side and with Jessica. I've watched this awards night go through many iterations and, for me, it's a pleasure to see good people recognized by an even better name.

Re: Mr. William King, Fairfield University 2026 MLK, Jr. Vision Award for Community Leadership

 

Dear Selection Committee, 

 

It is a great honor to work with Dr. John Drazan, School of Engineering to co-nominate Mr. William King for the 2025 MLK, Jr. Vision Award for Community Leadership. Mr. King is a 2015 graduate of the Teaching English to Students of Other Languages program housed in the School of Education. He is not a stranger to receiving accolades for his work with our campus and most recently was part of a teaching team that received the 2025 Divergent Award for Literacy Innovation from the Initiative for Literacy in a Digital Age. In 2023, his community leadership also received a 2023 Bridgeport Public Education Fund Inspiration Award for Outstanding Teaching. Additionally, he has been highly recognized through the Center of Social Impact’s initiatives because of his willingness to engage his immigrant- and refugee-background students with our campus.

 

Martin Luther King said, “It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not in favor of justice for all people” This is why we feel William King deserves the 2026 MLK Vision Award from Fairfield University for his community leadership. William fights for justice with the young people he serves in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and expands their minds by being a champion for higher level thinking, engaged partnerships, and providing opportunities so that his students can take part in the academic world provided on our campus.

 

Mr. King comes to his teaching as a leader who advocates for creativity, excellence, and support for each, and every, child. In 2012, when he first began his academic studies on campus, he worked on a project called “Operation Bootstrap.” In this first year of graduate studies, he quickly began writing curriculum that encouraged young people to embrace cultural diversity through a sequence of reading, exploration, reflection, and absolute inclusion.  

 

Soon after, Mr. King became an ESL teacher at Bassick High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut. That year, he also became instrumental in the design of Young Adult Literacy Labs with the Connecticut Writing Project (one- and two-week summer camps that support reading and writing on campus). Mr. King became instrumental to the program and brought a philosophy of Ubuntu - I am, because we are - to new levels. As a result, he’s published in several journals and presented at numerous conferences across the nation. He’s been featured on the National Writing Project Website and THE WRITE TIME, a video podcast that brings teachers and authors together to discuss the ways books inspire writing.  Most recently, he was featured during an interview with actor, model, and UNHCR activity Ger Duany, as well as the award-winning graphic novelist, Gene Luen Yang. In 2020, he also presented with the one and only Christopher Myers, son of Walter Dean Myers, in a special program for the National Council of Teachers of English, showcasing the importance of belonging and sharing refugee stories. That same year, he co-published the article, “We are all projects…Together we’re strong,” which was featured and honored by the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, one of the editors’ favorite articles during the years of their service.

 

Mr. King is masterful and a champion of young people. He’s caring, inspiring, and devoted. He’s also a coach who understands his kids, operates tirelessly, and is driven to catapult young people in support of their dreams.  He spends countless nights and weekends traveling to tournaments, providing mentorship, and guiding, most often as a volunteer. 

 

As an alum of Fairfield University, Will's impact is not limited to the work that he does himself as a teacher and coach, but in his role as a community leader to act as force multiplier for outreach programs on our campus. Will has also been instrumental in the creation of Dr. Drazan’s Sport Science Summer Research Program, where, over the past 4 years, he has recruited over 45 high school students to participate in a weeklong summer research program. Importantly, the students he recruits for this summer research program are not necessarily typical of a university-based science research experience. They don't necessarily like STEM to start with; instead, they like sports. By centering engagement based on a pre-existing interest in sports, he is bringing STEM to under- represented populations of youth within the School of Engineering. This highly impactful program would not exist without Will, and his talent to bridge such work with the Connecticut Writing Project.

 

Young people love "Coach King." His deep commitment to providing opportunities to youth makes it so that his word is gold with Bridgeport Kids. Just last weekend (November 22nd), Mr. King brought his students to the Fairfield Walk-On-Water Event. Earlier this year, he brought his students to a community event with the Women’s Volleyball Team. This past summer, Mr. King recruited over 34 youth from Bridgeport Public Schools to once again participate in Ubuntu Academy. Working with Dr. Drazan, he helped design a collaborative called “Engineering Human Togetherness” where students in the Sport Science Summer Research Program worked with teachers in the CWP Summer Institute, as well as the writers attending the Young Adult Literacy Labs. He also oversaw the writing of the research program so that it could be published in POW! Power of Words, an annual publication out of Fairfield University. 

 

Finally, Mr. King has kept an open-door policy for Fairfield University students to visit his classroom as they are thinking about becoming teachers. He assists with several community-engaged courses, stays in touch with the Center of Social Impact, and works with Bridgeport Public Schools to share his collaborations. His weekly conversations, modeling, and relationships with both undergraduate and graduate students have been inspirational, thought-provoking, and irreplaceable.

 

The two of us have nothing but positive things to say about Mr. King as an educator, writer, producer, coach, and brilliant human being. He centers so many of us within the work he does, offers action to the words academics love to use, and devotes himself to everyone who meets him. Most importantly, he exhibits the leadership characteristics of Martin Luther King and the mission of social justice at Fairfield University. He deserves to be seen in the light of the civil rights giant.

 

Please contact us if we can be of additional support. 

 

Sincerely,

 

 

 

A New Experience: Having My Poetry Set to Music for Part of the 2026 MLK Convocation Teach-In. So Honored and New.

I had a new experience yesterday. A few of my poems were set to music by composer Daniel Bernard Roumain as part of the 2026 MLK Convocation Teach-In. I have no musical talents, so I enjoyed hearing his improvisation as I read...I especially loved how he played when I read the piece about Prudence and Reuben Crandall

Good Morning. It is a pleasure to be part of the 2026 MLK Teach-In as part of the 2026 Martin Luther King, Jr. Convocation. My name is Bryan Ripley Crandall, Professor of English Education and Director of the Connecticut Writing Project.  I’m honored to be accompanied by composer Daniel Bernard Roumain, the current artist-in-residence at Fairfield University’s Quick Center for the Arts. Welcome to everyone…such celebrations and sharing remain important to the ongoing fight for justice, civil rights, historical accuracy, and our humanity. 

Today, I’m reading five poems, the first which paves the beginning for 19-year old me…a college sophomore first waking up to global narratives. The other four are tributes to writers, teachers, and thinkers, that have influenced me throughout the years

Wigmore Place - 1992

~b.r.crandall

I didn’t know we were young,

dancing to Blues Traveler on cobbled brick roads 

and overlooking London lights 

from Primrose.

I didn’t mind hash-wagging 

or pint-pumping in pubs

or smelling sweat in clubs

as IRA bombs welcomed 

counterstories to colonial rules

(while plays written by William,

became intellectual spears 

meant to shake me up).

Give the lion the pen, 

and read more about the hunt.

I didn’t know about civil wars in

Liberia, Sudan, Congo, or Somalia, 

or the ways scattered blood

lies and flows in the shadows

of sovereign rule 

and history.

What I knew was Literature of Exile, 

Carole Boyce Davies,

afternoon tea with Beryl Gilroy…

and their diaspora of dreams -

the power 

in teaching Caliban

a new language

to fight back.

In the 18th century, a woman kidnapped from West Africa and enslaved in Boston, gained international literary fame when she became the first Black individual to publish a book of poetry, one that focuses on morality and religion, which remains central to what many of us do at Fairfield University today. In 1772, Phyllis Wheatly poetically wrote to William, Legge, Earl of Dartmouth, linking the colonist’s fight for freedom from Great Britain to the freedom desired by those kidnapped from Africa and brought to the colonies to serve traditions of Whiteness and the disease of exploiting human beings in the name of its own emancipations…the democratic ideals we’re still striving for today.

To the Right Honourable Phyllis Wheatley

b.r.crandall

Tatum calls them lineages, textual, & I reflect on them this ‘morn, 

books I’ve read, that bring me life, that make me adorn

with rainy times, these days without much the sun’s ray,

for reflection and where education has had some sway

into the being I am, as history both sprouts and mourns

with the partial truths, as the powerful loves to destroy as it burns.

The lion celebrates the hunter, we’ve learned, it’s something to behold,

although there’s more to such stories, how such chapters unfold,

as we find ourselves sending prayers, familiar ones, back to the skies,

to fight the colonialism - their racism, oppression, it just never dies.

I’ve lived a life in libraries, as words are what I’ve desir’d,

all while they ban them, their ignorance remains, it’s never expir’d,

yet poetry & verse have always offered more light,

to guide dreams so more of us can sleep throughout the night.

Yet, here we are again, with violence, once more another strain 

to destroy democracy, freedom, in their narrative – oh, how they complain,

using politics & finances to continue the upper hand,

defying statues of liberty & opportunities promised for this land.

Perhaps their tune is accurate, with their unpatriotic, horrific song,

of snakes draped in yellow, slithering darkness on what Spring may sprung,

treading upon others, as always with their evil, to defy all we know is good…

Gulf of America, such cruelty, what they want to enforce others to be understood,

their supremacy, still eugenics, with a hatred for global fate,

that denies cultural beauty, denies most a seat.

It’s their nature to jail, kill, lie, and molest,

to defy equitable rights, although  obsessed with the breast,

milking the masses for money, whichever way they are mov’d,

remaining immoral, criminal, unethical, (how could they be belov’d?).

leaving most of us kneeling… all we can do is pray,

for time, once again, to choose reason, to have a little more sway,

and to realize a majority has always yearned to breathe (way past due)…

to fulfill its promise, e pluribus unum;. A reminder: we must renew.

Here we are again, pendulum, we’ve seen this all before,

white hoods, lynchings, exterminations, all which most deplore,

to counter their cruelty & venom – love is what we must find to give,

joy is for all life, its beauty, a fight so that others can simply live.

I reflect today, a thinker with no desire for any fame,

rereading Wheatley, remembering her name

thankful for Carol Boyce Davies, her teachings and intellectual fane 

of global history, diaspora…the relevancy remains. It’s quite plain.

Read. Learn. Question. Everything. Where our minds should abode,

The word & the world, Freire. Literacy. Together. To find good & God.

In the late 19th century, Paul Laurence Dunbar carried forth Black traditions set by Phyllis Wheatley, writing poetry, novels, and essays. Perhaps his most famous poem is “We Wear the Mask,” which I used in a rendezvous in the next poem. 

Rendezvousing with Dunbar

                                    ~brc 

 

We wear our lives fleshed with hope,

going for walks…writing…any way to cope,

with these inevitable truths that want to have their say,

to ground us to earth, to have their own way.

Yet  we look ahead, focus that telescope,

 

balancing our acts as we walk the tightrope,

the umbilical chord, an inevitable life-cycle trope…

of complex simplicity, and simple complexity

 

                        We wear our lives.

 

to find more meaning - a slippery slope

that summons idiots and fools (i’m such a dope).

When the rain comes, I’m merely paper-mache,

destined for disappearance and shadowed epistolary

a forgotten scripted in an unopened envelope… 

 

                        I am wearing this life.

I moved to Connecticut in 2011, but only learned about Canterbury, Connecticut, home to Prudence Crandall, Quaker and abolitionist who bravely established the first school for African American young women in 1833. She was chased out of the State by mobs, who used New England “Black Laws” to keep freed slaves from being educated. I also learned about her brother, Reuben, also an abolitionist, who was tried by the U.S. government for “seditious libel” - anti-slavery literature. He was a physician brought to Washington D.C. to defend his beliefs in freedom for all people. He won his case and ironically the man who brought charges agains Reuben Crandall, was Frances Scott Key…the slave owner and anti-human rights lawyer who also penned the National Anthem we still sing today in schools, in celebration of the 4th of July, and at sporing events. 

Singing Off Key

~brc

For me, it was the cats - 

the way they were dismembered and thrown

at beautiful girls learning to sound-out letters:

long tails, whiskered heads, and little fog feet…

their  K, K, K draped across desks & fences - 

the heart of your sister’s school.

I’m not one to carry a tune,

(although I sing in the shower).

There is no ballpark anthem for me.

I don’t have the genetics to belch

like Roseanne at a bar of gun enthusiasts.

Besides, Whitney sang it better,

and they’re no longer drinking Bud, anyway…

too focused on making America great again.

I need Sojourner’s Truth

and the questions Douglass had for the 4th of July.

And I find genealogy curious, Reuben,

wondering about your jail cell —

if you wrote letters prudently

while the tuberculosis made you cough

(before you found a way to Jamaica

for the sun and your last breath)

in search of liberty and freedom

while he was penning his poem 

gleaming with twilight,

red glare, & injustice.

Oh, yes. I can see

15 stars & stripes

draped around his 1836 gag rules

(the lock-him-up mobs

he set out to make you 

a pendulum swinging

from rope)

The bombs should have burst

over the homes they built

by exploiting human flesh -

But he lost the trial.

And the flag
is still here.

As our the names.

It’s ew

For me, the legacy of Martin Luther King is the ongoing mission to make the world a better place…to know not only U.S. history, but the history of the world and to bring in the question the brutality of those who abuse power, who deny justice and ignore laws, who create genocides and fuel hatred. Perhaps this is why an MLK Teach-In is extremely important at this moment on February 7, 2026. Writer Peter Balakian, a Professor of Humanities at Colgate University, documented the cruelty of the Armenian genocide. In his poem, “After the Survivors are Gone” he wrote, “Let us remember the child naked, waiting to be shot on a. bright day with tulips blooming around the ditch.” Poet Nikki Grimes challenges writers to take a golden shovel, and to dig a line from the work of another poem, to be the first words of a new poem that explores something on your mind, which I did here.

As I Try to Teach

b.r.crandall

Let me go there, I tell a room full of bushy-eyed undergrads. Right now, all of

us together. These kids returning from spring break, sandy beaches where they

remember stories of IPods no longer working and laptops that didn’t allow

the midterm assignment to be turned in on time. Yes, I say, I want to focus on the

child who lost parents to war, brothers of famine who spent childhood

naked, hungry, in fear of bombs bursting in air, homes burned,  pervasive

waiting for hope to be defined, to bring meaning to life, the opportunity 

to open a book & receive an education…to be given an explanation…to

be granted a human chance to breathe and feel free. Here is not there. I took a

shot at helping them exit a cave (they pay so much money after all). It was 

on a Monday. They were tan and excited about global opportunities, beaches,

a time to drink and have fun with friends in designer bikinis…their futures

bright with promising careers that trusts buy them. I tell them about the 

day a student shared the laceration on the back of his head, one received

with love from a war-torn nation while defending his mother and sister…

tulips in red offered by barbaric soldiers where colonial history continues the

blooming of territorial blood…first come the militaries, then the missionaries,

around and around and around it goes, these stories, these truths of the world,

the you wouldn’t believe what happened in Belize, Cancun, Aruba last week. Yes, we dig the

ditch amongst ourselves, surviving with our destinations, instagram, & wallets.

Thank you….it’s been my fortune to be able to share the power of ideas in memory, and with respect, for Martin Luther King, Jr.