MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: A MAN OF FIRSTS
The life and work of Martin Luther King Jr. was celebrated Monday with a variety of activities.
The day’s celebration started with a breakfast at the county’s administrative complex.
Family Promise was honored for its community service.
“This is for a person or group working the vineyard for all mankind,” Lula Seabrooks said in presenting the award.
Franklin Goldwire accepted for the organization in their absence.
Family Promise provides lodging through local churches for the homeless. They also have a day center where clients can seek employment, find housing and are provided child care.
Speaker for the morning was Pace Goodway. Goodway is a motivational speaker, an author and co-founder of Believe University.
Goodway said he was impressed with the crowd and the celebration.
“From what I see, we are all different shapes, different colors and different nationalities, Goodway said. “But as Martin Luther King would say, ‘We didn’t all come to America on the same ship, but we are all in the same boat.’”
Goodway said we have a holiday that will endure in honor of a man that only lived 39 years.
King graduated from high school and went to college at 15, Goodway said.
“What were you doing at 15?”
“By the time he was 28 he had met two presidents,” Goodway said.
Goodway said King wasn’t afraid to be the first.
“He wasn’t afraid to be the first in his class to graduate, the first to see an injustice on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama,” Goodway said. “At the age of 24 he led the civil rights bus boycott -- no one asked him to do that.”
Goodway encouraged the crowd to set an example.
“When there is something you know that is right, be the first,” he said. “Don’t wait for someone to ask you to do what you know is the right thing to do.”
Someone is watching when you when you are first, Goodway said.
“Engage our youth,” Goodway said. “They need us to let them know there is hope ahead.”
The Rev. Curtis Warner was named Grand Marshal for the celebration. Warner is the pastor of the Thomas Chapel A.M.E. Church.
The celebration continued with the annual parade in Springfield.
Other events included a youth service at the Effingham County Recreation Department Gymnasium and an evening program at Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Association Center in Guyton.