SPARKS - Sparks High School student Tracy Herrera said Monday she’s experienced discrimination. The light-skinned Hispanic teen apparently stands out in a school population that consists mostly of minorities.

“When I try to tell people I’m Hispanic, they say, ‘No, you’re white,’ and stuff like that,” Herrera said. “ ‘No, I’m Hispanic.’ ‘Well, you have curly hair and this and that and you have white skin.’ There’s some other people judged by their skin color. I just think you should get to know people before you say anything.”

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, though, Herrera could go to a place that values diversity. The members of various sites and teen centers of the Boys and Girls Club of Truckee Meadows (BGC) all gathered at its Ninth Street facility to honor the memory of the civil rights activist who was assassinated in the 1960s for his dreams of peace and the eradication of prejudice.

As part of the celebration, club staff invited 19-year-old actor Denzel Whitaker and Reno community liaison Marcus White to speak to the youth, who also set up a living history of King and other influential people represented by games, booths and posters.

“It shows everything blacks did, what they overcame and achieved and a whole bunch of people went above and beyond and did things people said they could never do,” said Javis Johnson, 17, of Hug High School said of the displays.

Johnson attends Hug’s BGC teen center on campus. His group created a poster that showed photos of King and other famous black people who made various contributions, including Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to travel in space aboard space shuttle Endeavor in 1992. Singer and actress Beyonce Knowles also was on the poster, as was the United States’ first black president, Barack Obama.

Whitaker, the nephew of actor/producer/director Forest Whitaker, spent time with the kids, answering the questions of the lively bunch, some more eager than others to take up a microphone in front of the crowd.

When Whitaker was asked what Martin Luther King, Jr. Day meant to him, he said King stood out above others during his time. “When I think of Martin Luther King, I think of freedom,” he said. “Martin Luther King, to me, is an inspiration … the staple of the movement and I’m very thankful and gracious and humbled by what he’s done for me. He is an inspiration.”

During the youth’s time in the living history tour, they were able to play trivia games, including teen-created computer game Jeopardy, which was displayed with a projector and pitted youth against each other. Candy and prizes were available to keep the kids engaged. At the end of the day, the BGC’s dance group, Artfull Souls gave a performance on the history of hip-hop dance and older teens watched actor Denzel Washington in the civil rights-themed football movie “Remember the Titans.”

Teen services director Lori Thomas said the purpose of Monday’s event was to educate and inspire children to interact with history. The club, she said, has held various events in the past, including a march in the city.

“We expect the kids to be more interested in things that happened way before they were alive just by the fact we’re trying to bring it up to them in a lively way,” she said. “It’s kind of a back-door route to piquing kids’ interest in history.”

Thomas said BGC staff are always looking for ways to integrate diversity into its programs.

“We are constantly, in our program, trying to put up as diverse a crowd as we can as examples for kids so they can see beyond the walls of their own neighborhood and so that they can see beyond the circumstances of their own lives and see the possibilities that the world has to offer,” Thomas said.