Honoring Black History: MLK Choir brings harmony to Siouxland
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KCAU) — Sandra Pearson and her husband Andrew have dedicated their free time to bringing unity and harmony to Siouxland.
While some may not have heard about the MLK Choir, it's been around for over 40 years.
'We started, I would say, back in the mid-eighties under Dr. Floyd Everett Brown,' choir director Sandra Pearson said. 'He was the one that was very instrumental in helping us to form this Martin Luther King choir.'
The idea to name the choir after the civil rights leader came from Pearson's sister.
New residential subdivision coming to Sioux City
'She wanted to bring in the community through unity. And so why not choose Dr. Martin Luther King's vision and his dream to bring that on?' Pearson said. 'So we've been singing basically every year since then, and it involves the entire Siouxland area.'Anyone can join the volunteer-based choir. There are typically 35 to 80 members throughout the year.'I was invited. I had an email sent to me asking if I would like to be part of the choir,' member Kent Carper said. 'As soon as I got here and found out about this group, I was a part of it and the choir. It's been a really big blessing and a lot of fun.'The choir only practices two times for an hour each starting two weeks before a performance. It makes it easier for people to participate. 'We can sing anywhere from four to five songs,' Pearson said. 'We sing songs that are so inspiring and with a lot of energy. Sometimes our songs can really go for a while because the audience is really giving us that energy.'
Longtime Siouxland Bishop to retire; Successor appointed
Choir members aren't just there to sing. They support one another as they go through difficult times.'After the rehearsal, I just really teared up because there were some words in the songs that really blessed me,' Carper said. 'It's a really, really awesome experience. I can't really describe in words, the energy, and just I love the unity as well because it's a very diverse choir of very diverse people of all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of different – just a lot of diversity. And we're just all together, united, singing together.'The choir's biggest event is the yearly performance around Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Hampton gamer brings ‘Complex Loss' to virtual reality world
Jamal Johnson was chilling at his buddy's house in Hampton in 2022 when his friend casually asked if he'd like to try out a new virtual reality gaming system, all hooked up in the living room. Yeah man, Johnson said. If his friend was into it, sure, why not give it a go? So he slipped a VR headset over his forehead and across his eyes, and the real world disappeared as he was transported into a virtual 3D realm. When he raised his arms in his friend's living room, his character's arms went up in the game. He turned his head, and his field of vision in the game rotated from left to right, he said. It felt like magic. 'At that instant, I was like, 'I gotta learn this. I gotta figure this out.' I was like, 'Nothing else matters to me anymore.'' The experience prompted Johnson, 44, to change the entire business model of his Hampton-based company, the Music Video Training Center. For more than a decade, the company had been making iOS apps and helping artists, private firms and government agencies produce videos. But in only a few minutes of wearing that headset, Johnson saw virtual reality as the future of media — and, thus, the future of his company. And after several years of experimentation and learning the necessary programming, Johnson and his creative team released, early this year, their first VR game. It's called 'Complex Loss.' Complex Loss can be played on the Meta Quest 2 or Meta Quest 3, which are standalone virtual headset systems, made by Meta Platforms, Inc., the company founded by Facebook-creator Mark Zuckerberg. Anyone who plays the game, plays as its main character. You, in the game, are an asset recovery agent sent on a mission to take back a business complex that's been stolen from the fictional RCM Corporation by a former, disgruntled employee. The game, which has received positive reviews online, has 10 levels. Each one is a different room, floor or outside area at the corporate office building such as a loading dock, recreation room and robotics lab. Its basic premise is based on the concept of an escape room, and in each level, the game's player finds clues that will unlock further progression. A player walks around the virtual environment picking up objects and uses a special scanning tool on their wrist to log recovered assets, and later confronts and fights bad guys. With its creators' previous film experience, the game sound effects are particularly unique. From beeps of pushed buttons to footsteps on different kinds of floorings to the thudding of objects a player can pick up and throw against walls, desks or anywhere of their choosing in the immersive-virtual space, each sound is a customized creation by the gamemakers. Complex Loss was recently spotlighted by SideQuest as one of the best VR games by independent gamemakers of summer 2025, and its release was a major step forward for a local media technology company — co-owned by Johnson and his 26-year-old partner, Dashawn Tucker-Bailey, from Newport News who joined the organization in 2018. The Music Video Training Center has had a hand in the creation of 21 films since Johnson founded it in 2008 and around 70 music videos that include MTV and BET credits, including a couple starring members of hip-hop supergroup the Wu-Tang Clan. In his first venture into video games in the mid 2010s, Johnson designed an Android app game, 'The Struggler,' for Hampton University that encouraged financial literacy. In it, a gamer plays as a 'struggling' person who must run down a street while being chased by bill collectors, Johnson said. 'Now each bill collector had a different power. So pink would be child support. If you got hit by child support, then money you had already collected to help you progress through the levels would be taken away.' It was a far simpler programming job than what's required for a virtual reality game. To create Complex Loss, Johnson teamed with his lead programer Robert Connell, who lives in Georgia. 'Our idea was that we already had a formula that everybody likes and enjoys in an escape room,' Connell said, 'so now how far can we take that within an immersive VR environment?' Building on the momentum of Complex Loss, Connell and Johnson have already begun work on its sequels with a plan to create a brand new series of escape room VR games. Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8139,
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
King Charles Shares Surprising Life Advice During Sweet Moment with 101-Year-Old Veteran
King Charles attended the Ceremony of the Keys at Lancaster Castle, where he gave a 101-year-old veteran some unexpected advice The outing comes amid the monarch's ongoing cancer treatment Queen Elizabeth also took part in the Ceremony of the Keys in 2015, and the event dates back to 1851, when it began with Queen VictoriaKing Charles shared a sweet moment with a 101-year-old centenarian during his latest outing. The royal, 76, attended the Ceremony of the Keys at Lancaster Castle on Monday, June 9, where he greeted visitors and dropped a bit of advice while chatting with a D-Day veteran. The King previously met Richard Brock while visiting Normandy last year, and when he saw him again on Monday, he noted how good 101-year-old Brock looked, The Daily Mail reports. The King told Brock, "You are fantastic," after asking his age, then quipped, "Keep drinking the whiskey." Brock's son Tony said, "He mentioned a nip of whiskey and said to keep taking it," per The Daily Mail. The outing comes as King Charles continues to receive treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer, a diagnosis that was shared with the public last year. Despite the health challenge, the King has kept a steady pace of in-person engagements and will lead the royal family at Trooping the Colour on June 14. In April, the King shared another candid — and humorous — moment while visiting Italy. After planting an oak tree at Villa Wolkonsky in Rome, he joked, "Well I do hope that I shall live long enough to see a little bit of growth in the tree." After arriving at Lancaster Castle for his first official visit as monarch, the King — who is also the Duke of Lancaster — participated in a Ceremony of Keys, during which he was given the keys to the castle. The tradition first began in 1851 with Queen Victoria. The King's late mother, Queen Elizabeth, also participated in the ceremony in 2015. Inside the grounds of Lancaster Castle, the King met with local business owners who sell cheese, wool yarns and furniture, and spoke with them about their products, including Gillian Hale of Butlers' Farmhouse Cheeses. The Daily Mail reports that the King smelled some of Hale's cheeses but did not taste them. He did, however, tell her that he especially loves sheep's cheese, which he prefers to eat with a digestive biscuit. Hale said she planned to pass some of her products along to the King after the Lancaster Castle event. "We're going to send some to him later in a goody bag," she said. "He was so gracious." At a reception after the ceremony, the King met with members of St. John's Hospice, staff from the Lancaster Literature Festival and employees from the organization Escape 2 Make, which hosts creative workshops for young people. Can't get enough of PEOPLE's Royals coverage? to get the latest updates on Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle and more! It's no secret that the King enjoys his whiskey — he even has his own line. King Charles released a special version of his Highgrove Royal Gardens whiskey in honor of his 75th birthday in November 2023. He also recently took a trip to Northern Ireland with Queen Camilla, where the pair took shots of whiskey at a bar while taking part in a tasting in March. In a video from the visit shared to X by royal reporter Rebecca English, the King and Queen toasted before knocking back the whiskey. They both fell silent after the shot, which earned plenty of laughter from onlookers at the bar. Read the original article on People
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Social Rundown: 1500 year old tomb, Zebra on the loose and Cocaine Flies
WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — Welcome back to the Social Rundown, where you can learn about the online trends happening globally and in Texoma, too! Want to get the latest tea or news on what's trending on social media? Tune in daily! 1500-year-old tomb In northern Syria, the remains of an underground tomb believed to be more than 1,500 years old were discovered by a contractor while clearing rubble from a destroyed home, revealing a historical site. Catch the Zebra! One pet zebra named Ed in Tennessee became loose for a whole week when it was finally caught and rescued. Ed became a viral sensation, garnering millions of views on Facebook and TikTok! Cocaine Flies Study Now, it's a pretty cool concept, as scientists say the flies share a lot more in common with humans, 'including around 75 percent of the genes that cause disease in humans.' But scientists are pretty much just getting flies to taste the cocaine to help build a model to study the addiction and hopefully work toward better therapies. In case ya'll were curious, the flies didn't like the taste. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
