The Rev. Jimmy Brown of St. Louis, Mo., will be the guest speaker at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration Monday, Jan. 16, at the Reardon Center, 5th and Minnesota Avenue, Kansas City, Kan.
Dr. Brown has served as pastor of St. Luke Memorial Missionary Baptist Church for 40 years, and has been president of the Missionary Baptist Church State Convention of Missouri for 10 years, from 2006 to 2016.
The celebration is open to the public.
The King Day celebration begins with a motorcade for hunger that will assemble at 9 a.m. at Mount Zion Baptist Church, 4th and Richmond, and will start at 10 a.m., ending at the Reardon Center, said Clarence Small, general coordinator of the celebration. People are asked to bring food donations that will be donated to the poor.
The program begins at 10:45 a.m. with Praise Dancers from area churches, followed by the program at 11 a.m. with music, Small said.
Dignitaries will be introduced, and there will be a proclamation from the mayor, Small said.
The Greater Pentecostal Youth Department will present the “I Have a Dream” speech, along with a song and a poem, he said.
A Mass Gospel Choir under the direction of Alicia Saunders will provide music.
The guest speaker, Dr. Brown, attended Lincoln University, the University of Missouri at St. Louis, Missouri Baptist College, St. Louis Christian College, Andersonville Bible College, Asbury Tehological Seminary-Beeson Institute. He holds a bachelor’s, master’s and two doctor of divinity degrees.
The theme of the Kansas City, Kan., celebration is “In Light of the Dream, Where Do We Go from Here, Chaos or Community?”
As of Friday, there were 51 educational scholarships that will be given to students at the King Day celebration, Small said. The Rev. C.E. Taylor- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholarships will go to high school seniors from the Kansas City, Kan., Turner, Bonner Springs and Piper districts, he said.
Organizers of the event are hoping and praying for good weather on Monday, Small said, and at this time, temperatures are expected to be in the 50s for the event.