A local educator reading from a favorite classic poem urged listeners at the 23rd Annual Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast to take the road less traveled — to build relationships with those different than themselves for the sake of racial harmony.
Charles Edwards, Columbus East High School assistant principal and a former English teacher, was the keynote speaker at the event that attracted a crowd of about 325 people — larger than last year — Monday morning at The Commons in downtown Columbus.
Though Edwards regularly cited a passage from King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963 about “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners … together at the table of brotherhood,” he regularly wove another work into his remarks. That was Robert Frost’s “The Road Less Traveled,” which Edwards frequently referenced with students when he was an English teacher.
“The time will come to choose between what is right and what is easy,” Edwards said near the end of his remarks, shortly before earning a standing ovation at the end of his talk.
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City leaders including Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop plus several city council members, and top officials in education, law enforcement, nonprofits, houses of worship, business, the arts and more attended the breakfast. The gathering, organized by the local African American Pastors Alliance, continues to be among the more popular and diverse local events.
“I have to be willing to take the road less traveled,” Edwards said. “Until someone is willing to do something different, everything will continue to be the same,” Edwards said.
He heralded King as one who clearly took a less-traveled road leading the nation’s civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s until King was shot and killed in 1968 standing up for the rights of mostly minority sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn.
Lienhoop saluted what he saw as King’s remarkable balance between righteous indignation and a law-abiding, Christian response amid the famous Montgomery bus boycott that lasted more than a year in the mid-1950s. King wrote in the book “Stride Toward Freedom” of some blacks’ “bitterness that could easily rise to flood proportions.”
Jim Roberts, superintendent of the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation, and a talented singer, took the crowd on a musical journey of pop, folk and other tunes either linked with King and the civil rights movement or about the same topics. Roberts, a big Elvis Presley fan who has visited the late legend’s sites in that city, cited Presley’s tune “If I Can Dream” recorded in the wake of King’s death.
Roberts also highlighted classics from such acts as varied as U2 with “Pride (In the name of Love),” Neil Diamond with “Dry Your Eyes,” and Simon Garfunkel with “The Sound of Silence.”
“As a school corporation, we must not be silent (about injustice and inequality),” Roberts said. “We must recognize and do something about the barriers that many of our kids face.”
Jerone Wood received a loud standing ovation immediately after walking to the podium and introducing himself to the crowd as the “first African American city council member ever elected in Columbus, Indiana.”
“This is something I do not take lightly,” Wood said of his future service.
He then dramatized his voice similar to King’s and read excerpts from King’s 1957 “Give Us the Ballot” speech in a soaring oratorical style. In the presentation, King advocated for the voting rights of blacks. Wood is well known to those at the event. For years, he performed creative and passionate mime to music and even to King’s “I Have a Dream” speech a few years ago.
Also earning a rousing standing ovation was an African American community choir led by local singer Abigail Jackson. In the past, Rosslyn King organized and led a similar ensemble at the breakfast in 2010.
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The African American Pastors Alliance awarded $1,000 college scholarships to each of the the following local seniors at Monday’s 23rd Annual Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast. Then the local African American Fund added $1,000 for each of the students as part of its new program called the Rev. Martin Luther King Scholastic Awards:
- Daveed Jolly of Columbus North High School, planning to study business.
- Tessa Lomax of Columbus North High School, planning to focus on STEM studies to prepare for a career ranging from biology to engineering.
- Madison Fischer of Columbus East High School, planning to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering technology.
- Dominik Pinkney, planning to study cyber security and robotics.
- Makayla Reeves, planning to pursue nursing to become a nurse practitioner.
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