Texarkana's NAACP King celebration focuses on love, service

Robert Jones, president of the Greater Texarkana Branch NAACP, opens the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day program Monday at Dunbar Elementary School  in Texarkana, Texas.
Robert Jones, president of the Greater Texarkana Branch NAACP, opens the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day program Monday at Dunbar Elementary School in Texarkana, Texas.

TEXARKANA, Texas - Speakers, singers and a candlelight ceremony celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy of service and love on Monday, the national holiday honoring the assassinated civil rights hero.

Titled "Making a Difference, the Power of One," the event hosted by the Greater Texarkana Branch of the NAACP took place at Dunbar Elementary School. Hundreds filled the floor of the school's gymnasium to hear messages of inspiration and motivation.

Branch President Robert Jones began the event by urging attendees to do three things in 2020: register to vote, participate in the census and join the NAACP. The Rev. R.E. Ruffin followed with an official welcome.

Texas-side City Council Member Jean Matlock reminded audience members that MLK Jr. Day is the only federal holiday designated a national day of service. She encouraged them to carry on King's legacy of love.

"Pastor King lived by the Bible and could look anyone in the eyes and love him in spite of everything that was done to him. Are we demonstrating that same kind of love?" Matlock said.

Keynote speaker Pastor Willie J. Carrington II, of Sunset Missionary Baptist Church, also encouraged the audience to emulate King's love and kindness.

"Dr. King envisioned an America where people truly exemplified love, and that when we see someone else of the other gender or the other race, we don't cross the street out of fear, but we greet them with a kind hello and continue on with our day. It does not kill us to be nice to one another," Carrington said.

He also admonished attendees to use their right to vote, which King and others fought so hard to win.

"Don't cry if you don't vote. If you don't vote, don't open your mouth when you get stuck with what you don't want. Many of our forefathers and ancestors fought for us to have the right to vote, and it should be a distinguished honor as an African-American to be able to vote. We fought hard to get here, and we can't stop fighting now," Carrington said.

Herman Wallace delivered an oratory tracing the history of the 1960s civil rights struggle beginning with Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. He recounted the ensuing Birmingham bus boycott and other events including the violent oppression of marchers in 1965 on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

Students lit candles and recited King's principles of nonviolence: Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people; nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding; nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people; nonviolence holds that voluntary suffering can educate and transform; nonviolence chooses love instead of hate; and nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.

Musical selections included a saxophone solo by Cameron Smith, an original song sung by Dr. Linda Nolen and a medley of songs by the Zion District East End Youth Fellowship.

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