Three Carroll County students won prizes Feb. 4 for their inspiring essays about the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The winners, announced during the annual program, "A Dream Deferred: Time to Break the Silence," were Kevin Hudson, a tenth grader at Century High School, Maya Koepke, a seventh grader at Sykesville Middle School, and Alex Stoneroad, a fifth grader at Freedom Elementary.

Kevin Hudson won with his essay explaining how Dr. King would view today’s youth. He writes: “If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today he would dig his heel into the ground of American dissipation and drop his fist on the tabletop of democracy and demand that something is done, that something is changed – to produce progress in the fields of morality, the media, and the ideals of American democracy.”

Maya Koepke won with her essay about conflict in the Middle East, written as a speech in the style of Martin Luther King, Jr. “Stop sending your brother, sisters, uncles, wives and children off to war,” she writes. “If everyone runs out of soldiers, no one will be able to fight.”

Alex Stoneroad described how he would make peace in his school, his community and beyond. “I would call on my friends and classmates,” he writes, “who had already learned the lesson of peace, and send them throughout the community to greet and help everyone they saw, no matter what they believe, where they come from, what color their skin is, whether they’re rich or poor, or even what their situation is. In this way, they community would become more peaceful.”

Prizes included cash, commemorative t-shirts, certificates and gift bags.

The celebration, which included music from the McDaniel College Gospel Choir, a symbolic candle-lighting ceremony and awards, featured keynote speaker Zenobia Hikes, vice president of Student Affairs at Virginia Tech University. Hikes provides oversight to 15 university departments, including the Dean of Students office, student health and recreational sports. She helped the university heal after the worst school shooting in U.S. history.

The Martin Luther King, Jr., program is sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Services, Alumni Relations, the Black Student Union, Hispano-Latino Alliance, Multicultural Student Association, Women's Issues Group, the International Club, the Carroll County chapter of the NAACP and the Department of Minority Achievement and Intervention Programs of Carroll County Public Schools.