Maya Angelou Honored with Voice of Peace Award

Saturday may have started out gray and drizzly, but by early afternoon it was as sunny inside the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center as it was outside.

That's because the venue was hosting the first of what was hoped to be an annual Voices of Peace celebration, put on by nonprofit group Hope for Peace and Justice, dedicated to "equip[ing] people of faith to be champions of values that will leave the world more compassionate, united, and healthy."

That's according to the Rev. Michael S. Piazza, organization president and the national pastor and dean of the Dallas-based Cathedral of Hope.

Mr. Piazza was just one of several emcees for an afternoon honoring the group's first recipient of its Voice of Peace award, poet Maya Angelou, an award-winning author and civil-rights acticist.

The show drew a packed house that heard an orchestra and the Voices of Peace Chorus, a choir of members of the Women's Chorus of Dallas, the Turtle Creek Chorale and the Cathedral of Hope Sanctuary Choir.

The aggregation filled the bowl of the stage of the Meyerson, all the way up to the magnificent pipe organ, which was also deployed. As this group kicked things off with a number of songs, including several written specifically for Dr. Angelou, the hall's energy began to grow.

The male chorus of the First Baptist Church brought the energy up to tent-revival levels with a rousing version of the old spiritual "Down by the Riverside," a feeling that was clinched by fourth-grader Dalton Sherman, winner of the recent 16th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Oratory Competition. He gave a stirring speech about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that drew laughs and a standing ovation.

The keynote, however, was the acceptance speech of Dr. Angelou. Walking slowly onto the stage, she managed to convey both frailty and strength.

Her speech took the biblical theme of the rainbow God sent during the flood to give Noah hope. Anyone who does even the smallest unasked courtesy to a fellow man, she said, was one such rainbow.

At the end of her address, Dr. Angelou thanked the audience for being a "rainbow in my clouds" and asked them to consider her the same.

Judging by the response, that was a foregone conclusion.

Article by Matt Weis in the Dallas Morning News