MOSES LAKE - Moses Lake High School celebrated Black History Month with two student assemblies.

The assemblies were part of an effort to highlight diversity at the school and in Moses Lake, said Miriam Ransom, Dean of Students at the high school.

Moses Lake is diverse, said Ransom, referencing the city's large Hispanic population, but other minorities, like African-Americans, make up much less of the population, she noted.

"Those that are here, we want to get together and make sure that everyone knows that we are just as important as anybody else and we can contribute," she said.

Following the Pledge of Allegiance, students Jaylnn Hernandez and Jason Gonzalez led students in the Black National Anthem, a song written in 1900 by John Rosamond Johnson using lyrics written by his brother James Weldon Johnson.

Director Dan Beich led the Moses Lake High School jazz band through "Harlem Nocturne," an homage to the innovative music forged by black citizens of Harlem.

Student Leah Juergens performed a poem remembering Martin Luther King Jr.'s fight for civil rights and student Taylor Logg recited King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Guest speaker Otis Freelon was an ordained minister at the age of 14 and is the interim pastor at Galilee Baptist Church.

Freelon said slavery dehumanized people by treating them as property.

"Imagine, just for a moment, being told you were one-twentieth or one-fifth of a human," he said. "You have the same capabilities, same abilities, as anyone else, but you were told, because you were owned, you were not that intelligent. Now, some of us sitting here today might say, 'Well you know what? I'm going to fight, I'm going to prove that I'm better than what you say I am.' And we may use different methods, different means to accomplish that."

Slaves decided not to use their fists to fight back, but rather the power of song, the underground railroad, "and other forms that were used to cause freedom to come about ... They did not allow what was said about them to hold them," said Freelon.