Many thanks to our local King Commission for their hard work year after year in planning and producing a very full weekend of activities to celebrate the principles of equality, non-violence, and justice taught by Martin Luther King Jr. Two of our dear friends are its leaders, Mayor Sundai Stevenson, chair, and Alvin Jackson, vice chair.
 |
Sheila and I especially enjoyed and were inspired by the ecumenical service on Sunday afternoon at First United Methodist Church. The music was moving and the message from the Rev. Dr. R.L. White was an eloquent and powerful retelling of the Joseph story.
|
 |
As the program closed that beautiful sanctuary reverberated with the united voices of all races and hues singing "We Shall Overcome," I had tears in my eyes.
|
|
This morning Sheila and I headed down to the corner of Broad Street and First Avenue to join the throng waiting to stride up Broad Street in a commemorative march to remind ourselves and our neighbors of the brave struggle to end segregation and Jim Crow evil right here in our own hometown. We marched past buildings where I witnessed segregated water fountains and lunch counters in my own teen years.
As march leader Alvin Jackson called on us to form the march Sheila and I fell in toward the front.
 |
There was a very large crowd this year. But there were many that we walk with almost every year like Wendy Davis (purple jacket), Jim Watkins (in the middle), Vincent Mendez (in the cap)...
|
 |
| Alvin Jackson has led this march for nearly four decades now. I am proud to have marched with him for about the last twenty of those years. |
 |
| We sang "We Shall Overcome" and other songs of the civil-rights struggle. |
 |
| The march ended at the city auditorium where we took an opportunity to have a picture taken with Alvin Jackson. |
 |
| Unrelated photo: On the way back down Broad we noticed this artwork by, I suspect, our friend Jeremy Smith. This takes a major portion of the front window of the V3 Magazine building. Jeremy uses spray "snow" to create this art. Ain't he something? |
Here are three other posts made on this day in the past...
No comments:
Post a Comment