‘We Can Do It’: ABC Alumnus Leads Stirring MLK Day Service in New Canaan

Reading the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “The Other America” speech put Jason Michael Land in mind of something that his grandmother used to say. A 2003 New Canaan High School graduate and ABC student here in town who has since gone on to Yale Divinity School, Land on Monday morning recalled that she would say “God made us all in his image—not some of us black and inferior, not some of us white and superior.”

“Believe it or not, I learned this lesson here, in New Canaan, the ‘Next Station To Heaven’ ” Land told more than 200 people gathered inside United Methodist Church on South Avenue for an annual service in remembrance of King. “Now I would be lying if I said that it was easy, because it definitely was not. However, I did find that I am no better nor worse than anyone else. I did learn that I have a mother and brothers and sisters who look nothing like me, but who will support and defend me to the very end.