Cold temperatures and lingering ice didn’t stop a crowd from taking to the streets for the annual Hopkinsville Martin Luther King Jr. Day March that went from the Boys and Girls Club to Mount Olive Baptist Church.
In a service hosted by the Hopkinsville-Christian County NAACP following the march, attendees remembered, celebrated and honored the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Reverend Randy Jackson spoke briefly, as the service he was supposed to lead Sunday was canceled due to weather.
Reverend Jackson says although he is a pastor at a church in Minnesota now, since coming back to Hopkinsville he is happy to see the growth that has occurred in his absence. He says while there’s still work to be done, Dr. King paved the way for others to succeed.
Keynote speaker Reverend Timothy Collazo of Gordonsville Baptist Church remarked on several historic landmarks, including the Brown vs the Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He says those decisions did not eliminate racism, but they did set the framework for the future.
He says Dr. King spoke of many things in his life, but the thing he spoke of most, was love.
The winners of the Christian County Public School System School Challenge for the fifth time was Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School. The youngest marcher was 7-year old Nicholas Hickman and the oldest was longtime business owner 78-year old Hugh Northington.
