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Woman who co-founded MLK scholarship recalls her experience in an immigrant family

Jan 28, 2017 734

BY: DAN KRIEGER

Jennie Hiltel, the daughter of Italian immigrants, was severely shaken by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. The Martin Luther King Jr. High School Memorial Scholarship Fund, which Jennie had helped start the year after King’s death, and its annual barbecue fundraiser were as important as ever in 1992. Jennie, then in her late 80s, continued to be active when our longtime friend, editor and co-author Stan Harth wrote “A Message from Jennie” for this column.

These excerpts from that “message” have a special resonance for us in 2017. Jennie’s sense of urgency in 1968 “may be found, in part, in the experiences of her own family and in her reading of works by and about the civil rights leaders. “She said that her father, Achille Banchieri, ‘could save enough money from working in the Sacramento Valley so that he could return to northern Italy and marry Carolina Nieri.

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SOURCE: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/

TAG : California

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