The Mary McLeod Bethune Club has announced that the 2018 Memorial Celebration for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is to be held April 7, 2018.
The Year 2018 marks fifty years since the Civil Rights leader and one of the most important leaders in American history was assassinated as he fought for civil rights, equality, economic equity and peace.
The Guest Speaker for the 2018 Memorial will be the Reverend Brian Riley, who is Ministerial Staff with the Spottswood AME Zion Church, a leader in the New Britain Black Ministers Alliance, an NAACP board member and President of the New Britain Independent Newspaper, Inc., which publishes the New Britain Progressive.
The ceremony will be held at 11:00am on April 7th at the New Britain Martin Luther King Monument, at the corner of Martin Luther King Drive, Stanley Street, Smalley Street and North Street.
Dr. King was assassinated in 1968 while is was in Memphis supporting union sanitation workers who were striking for a better life for their families and better working conditions against a racist system in that city.
At the time, he was in the middle of organizing the Poor People’s Campaign, proposing a progressive set of reforms that would have guaranteed for everyone in the nation decent paying jobs, guaranteed minimum incomes, decent housing, quality education, participatory democracy and universal health care.
The Mary McLeod Bethune Club says that everyone is welcome to attend the Memorial, reminding people of the words of King, “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
