STUDENT HOPES ART DISPELS RACIST IMAGE

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, January 20, 1992                   TAG: 9201200019
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARTHA BRYSON HODEL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MILTON, W.VA.                                LENGTH: Short
STUDENT HOPES ART DISPELS RACIST IMAGE
A senior at an all-white high school hopes the award he won for artwork honoring Martin Luther King will show that his school has been wrongly tarred as racist.
Jay Hibner said he made a woodblock print, "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," to dispel the negative image Milton High School developed in October.
Students hurled pizza and racist taunts at a visiting girls basketball team that included two black coaches and five black players.
Hibner, 17, said newspaper stories about the incident "looked like something that could have happened in the 1960s."
"The way they were talking, it could have been the race wars all over again," he said.
Hibner said the incident got him thinking about ways to show that not all Milton students are racists.
His art teacher suggested he enter a statewide poster contest in honor of King's birthday, which is celebrated today.
"I was struck by an account in one book of how King would sit for hours in his jail cell without moving, just thinking," Hibner said. "It was while he was in jail that he wrote many of his letters and speeches and sermons, including the beginnings of the `I Have A Dream' speech."
"It's really an unusual piece of art and it makes a strong statement," said Carrie Lambert, who ran the contest. "The judges did not know who the artist was or what school he attended. I just about flipped when I learned it was a Milton High School student."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB