By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer
About 150 people rode on floats or sat in open trailers or on the back of pickups despite steady wind gusts that created a chill factor below freezing as the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade moved through the city’s northeastern sector on Monday, January 20, in honor of the slain Civil Rights leader, who was killed by an assassin’s bullet as he stood on a Memphis, Tenn. motel balcony in April 1968.
About five-dozen hearty souls stayed for the annual MLK Day program, which was moved from the cold confines of Houston Avery Park to the neighboring Progressive Civic & Recreational Club (PCRC) headquarters due to the blustery conditions.
Three Escambia County Middle Schools students — Naryia Staples, Neleh Gholsby and Ava Bayne — shivered together at the park as they awaited the end of the parade. Miss Gholsby said the national holiday was a special time for all people of color.
“Dr. King is where we get our freedom from,” the 14-year-old said. “He is the reason we get to do the things we are able to do today. That’s why we celebrate him, to see the freedoms he fought for.”
After those who participated in the 65-entry parade returned to the park and filed into the PCRC building, the annual program in honor of King, who would have been 96 years old if he had lived, got under way.
Event co-organizer Karean Reynolds, a practicing attorney and judge of Atmore Municipal Court, made note of the crowd during his opening remarks.
“It makes me proud to see so many people here to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday,” he said.
D.K. Grissett, band director at Escambia County High School, played keyboards while ECHS choral director Conrad Weber led attendees in the singing of the Black National Anthem (“Lift Every Voice and Sing”) before Reynolds introduced the parade’s Grand Marshal, George “J.B.” Knott.
Paulette German then related the highlights of King’s life, from his birth to his assassination. She recounted that the Nobel Peace Prize winner was arrested 29 times, mostly for civil disobedience, and closed with one of King’s most famous quotes, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Prior to the keynote address by James Averhart, a retired U.S. Marine who serves as executive director of the Alabama NAACP, Reynolds announced that the Freeman Family float was selected as the parade’s best and awarded the group a cash prize of $300. He also recognized the parade’s Grand Marshal.
Averhart, speaking at times with the fire of a revival preacher, suggested that King be remembered as “a man of non-violence, a man of determination … a man who served mankind.”
He noted that today, 56 years after King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, blacks “still face difficult days ahead,” adding that “we still have much work to do, mountains to climb and obstacles to overcome” before a unified community is created.
“In the spirit of Dr. King, let us signal to the world that — in America today — the pursuit of a more perfect union lives on, the march toward a Promised Land goes on, and the belief —not merely that we will overcome, but that as a nation we will come together and continue to push forward in achieving our goals of sustaining a beloved community, a unified community, also goes on. Let us keep our faith and rise to the challenges of this world.”
Averhart, who has twice run for election to Congress, also blasted the nation’s housing shortage, the number of homeless people in the U.S. and the nation’s healthcare program, among other social ills.
The crowd gave him a generous ovation, then moved outside to fill plates with fried catfish or chicken and fixings, prepared again this year by Curtis Tucker, before dispersing.
