Local Artist share her artwork with the Jefferson County Public Library in Fayette, MS. Compliment of MS Virgie Jackson Prickett.
_______JEFFERSON CO. LIBRARY____________
Friday, February 12, 2021
Friday, January 15, 2021
Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
What
Is Your Life’s Blueprint?
Six months before he was assassinated, King spoke to a group
of students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967.
I want to ask you a question, and that is: What is your
life’s blueprint?
Whenever a building is constructed, you usually have an
architect who draws a blueprint, and that blueprint serves as the pattern, as
the guide, and a building is not well erected without a good, solid blueprint.
Now each of you is in the process of building the structure
of your lives, and the question is whether you have a proper, a solid and a
sound blueprint.
I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your
life’s blueprint. Number one in your life’s blueprint, should be a deep belief
in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness. Don’t allow anybody
to make you feel that you’re nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel
that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.
Secondly, in your life’s blueprint you must have as the
basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields
of endeavor. You’re going to be deciding as the days, as the years unfold what
you will do in life — what your life’s work will be. Set out to do it well.
And I say to you, my young friends, doors are opening to
you–doors of opportunities that were not open to your mothers and your fathers
— and the great challenge facing you is to be ready to face these doors as they
open.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist, said in a lecture
in 1871, “If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a
better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the woods,
the world will make a beaten path to his door.”
This hasn’t always been true — but it will become
increasingly true, and so I would urge you to study hard, to burn the midnight
oil; I would say to you, don’t drop out of school. I understand all the
sociological reasons, but I urge you that in spite of your economic plight, in
spite of the situation that you’re forced to live in — stay in school.
And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out
to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to
do it. don’t just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that
the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better.
If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets
like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed
music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera.
Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the
hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street
sweeper who swept his job well. If you can’t be a pine at the top of the hill,
be a shrub in the valley. Be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway,
just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you
win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.
— From the estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Friday, January 8, 2021
UPCOMING CLOSURE!
The Jefferson County Public Library
1269 Main Street Fayette, MS
will be closed Monday, January 18, 2021
for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!!!
We will reopen on Tuesday
January 19, 2021 at 9:00AM