Local groups celebrate MLK with events

Published 10:15 am Monday, January 9, 2017

With Martin Luther King Day just around the corner, one of the year’s more unique events is set to begin the MLK weekend. Friday, the Georgia College Office of Inclusive Excellence, along with several other local groups and institutions, is planning its first ever MLK Jr. Community Breakfast, entitled “Where do we Go from Here?” The breakfast, named after a King speech given to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta in 1967, will feature remarks from several prominent Milledgeville figures, including Mayor Gary Thrower, Georgia College President Steve Dorman, and Baldwin County Schools Superintendent Dr. Noris Price, to help commemorate King’s civil rights legacy. The event culminates in the reading of excerpts by local students from a special essay/creative works competition in response to Dr. King’s speech, outlining how they believe King’s ideas can be used to better the Milledgeville community.

“[The breakfast] is a community collaborative with the Chamber of Commerce, the SCLC, the NAACP, and the [local] school systems,” said Dr. Veronica Womack, Georgia College’s Chief Diversity Officer and the event’s main organizer. “We wanted to provide an opportunity for all of our community to be together, and children are typically a good starting point because everyone is interested in the welfare of kids. I wanted to make sure there was an educational component to the celebration because we often talk about Martin Luther King and his social justice work, which is very important, but he also was a scholar.”

In their responses to King’s “Where do we Go from Here” speech, students from Baldwin County Public Schools, John Milledge Academy, Sinclair Christian Academy, Georgia Military College, Education Brings Leadership and Achievement, and Georgia College Early College were asked to display an understanding of ‘Dr. King’s concerns with equality in education, healthcare, and economics, as well as the responsibilities of public service’ within the framework of the Milledgeville community. Responses ranged from essays and poems to artistic representations of Dr. King’s vision, and yielded one winner each from local Elementary, Middle, and High schools. In choosing between twenty or so responses sent in by local schools, Womack said that she and her team of judges had a real challenge picking a winner.

“We do have a fairly big planning committee, and we had a meeting of eight people yesterday to determine who the winners would be,” said Womack. “I was just floored by the participation and the quality of the work. We were very very excited about the fact that the students did seem to read the essay, and they were very thoughtful.”

While the “Where do we Go from Here” Breakfast will bring together an impressive collection of Milledgeville luminaries, the event will be the first of several to celebrate Dr. King over the weekend. A few hours after Friday’s breakfast, Georgia Military College will host their MLK Day Ceremony with remarks from Col. Mary Martin, a GMC alumnus and the first female Army Commandant of the U.S. Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI). On Saturday, the Milledgeville chapter of the NAACP will hold its new officer installation at Mt. Zion Baptist Church. On Monday, Dr. Price will serve as keynote speaker at Flagg Chapel Baptist Church’s MLK Day Celebration Service. The weekend culminates in the MLK Day March at Huley Park at 11 a.m.

In the “Where do we Go from Here” Breakfast, Dr. Womack and her fellow community leaders will attempt to spread Dr. King’s message of nonviolence and political mobilization to the Milledgeville community. In holding an essay contest for students throughout Baldwin County, the breakfast’s organizers hope to spur a younger generation to think critically on Dr. King’s legacy, so that a new generation of Baldwin County citizens might continue to apply the same lessons that ring true of Dr. King today.

“Most of the kids talked about starting with the individual, with making a change as an individual and then carrying that into the broader community,” said Womack. “In some ways I think this was always King’s message – before you can start to make external changes, you have to have internal change. I think the students picked up on that, and that was certainly one of the bright spots for me.”

The “Where do we Go From Here” Community Breakfast will be this Friday, Jan. 13, in Georgia College’s Magnolia Ballroom at 7:30 a.m. Tickets are available in advance for $12 from the Milledgeville-Baldwin County Chamber of Commerce. For more information, visit www.gcsu.edu/oie/mlk-community-breakfast or call the Office of Inclusive Excellence at 478-445-4233.