The 27th Annual Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Breakfast does more than serve as a reminder of the late civil rights leader’s passion for racial equality and more.
Fred King, who organizes much of the free buffet gathering on behalf of the local African American Pastors Alliance, will tell you as much. The event this year is slated from 7 to 9 a.m. Jan. 15 at The Commons, 300 Washington St. in Columbus.
“It has become a ‘State of the Community’ event of sorts, where we come to hear an update from the Mayor (Mary Ferdon), the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. Superintendent (Jim Roberts), the NAACP President (Johnnie Edwards), and other entities that impact our lives in Columbus,” King said. “This is all done in the casual and friendly atmosphere of breaking bread in unity.”
If the local King’s phrasing at the end of that comment sounds spiritual, it’s because he has a pastoral background — and because he and his so-organizers never shy away from referencing how the late King, a Baptist pastor himself, blended his Christian faith with social justice and more in his fight from the 1950s until his death by assassination in 1968.
City council member Jerone Wood, who has been a part of past MLK breakfasts off and on since 2010 as a mime, will be the featured speaker as part of the overall event theme “It Starts With Me: Shift the Culture, Be the Solution.”
Others speakers will include people such as teacher Whittney Wood-Gaines, a catalyst for the local, extensive Black History Month website created last year and again full of 25 related events this year at blackhistorycolumbus.com.
“We officially launch our new calendar at the breakfast,” Wood-Gaines said.
The breakfast normally attracts up to 300 people. And, besides the aforementioned speakers, its attendees normally include leaders in law enforcement, nonprofits and social service, the judicial system, media, medicine and more.
”This event has come to be regarded as one of the most important events of the year in Columbus,” King said. “Coincidentally, if not providentially, the MLK holiday occurs very close to the start of the New Year, which is a time when people are thinking of getting a fresh start, hitting the reset button, and kicking the year off with a positive outlook.
“We believe that this event affords us all such an opportunity to do this.
“We are proud of the fact that this event brings together such a diverse cross-section of our community in the spirit of fellowship and unity.”
The emphasis on education is also a cornerstone of the gathering.
The pastors alliance, with the help of local businesses and corporations, again will award six $1,000 college scholarships to local high schoolers. Ivy Tech Community College and IU Columbus will again each provide matching $1,000 scholarships for each recipient to attend their respective institutions.
Furthermore, the MLK Scholarship recipients will be awarded an additional $1,000 scholarship toward their second year of college by the local African American Fund.
“We believe that education is the key to economic empowerment,” King said, “and to lifting our community to a higher socio-economic status.”
