Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Hundreds show up to honor the slain civil rights leader.
The United Ebony Society of Gwinnett County held its 11th annual MLK Program and Parade Monday. Starting with a program that included music, singing, speeches and tributes, on the grounds of the Historic Gwinnett County Courthouse, an estimated crowd of 300 attendees gathered in the cold weather to pay homage to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Joseph McCarty, President of United Ebony Society stated this event started in 2000 as a grass roots community based effort to recognize the many achievements and contributions that Dr. King made in his lifetime. “It is important for all of us to come together and celebrate the many good deeds of Dr. King’s legacy so that they are not forgotten,” said McCarty. Kristin McNutt, 17, a …
Monday, January 17, 2011
A day of celebration and reverence.
(Editor's Note: This article and video appeared Monday in our neighboring Patch, Stone Mountain.) It was a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., a reminder of our nation's tragic past, and an admonition of how far we have to go. But most of all, the ninth annual Martin Luther King Jr. parade and rally in Stone Mountain Village was a celebration of how far we've come since the civil rights leader's tragic death. It was a show of unity. And it was fun. Patch tried to capture all of that in this video of Monday's event.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Champion 8th-grader Jared Sawyer will be reciting the famous Martin Luther King Jr. speech this year for the third time.
This year marks the ninth annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration hosted by the city of Stone Mountain and the DeKalb NAACP, with a parade, rally and Ebenezer-like services in downtown Stone Mountain. And this will be the third year that Jared Sawyer will reenact the famous “I Have a Dream” speech at Champion Middle School during the rally, and he does it with the same fire and tone that the masterful orator King had. Sawyer, currently an 8th grade student attending Champion, was first approached to recite the speech for the 2009 Martin Luther King holiday by his principal, Angelique Smith-Hunt. The “I Have a Dream” speech at Champion had been going on since school opened in 2006, and its last candidate had just graduated from Champion …
