At Asheville MLK Prayer Breakfast, a family's story of fortitude in the face of racism

ASHEVILLE - For the first time in three years, Asheville and Buncombe County met face-to-face to share food and community at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Prayer Breakfast.

With COVID-19, the prayer breakfast had been restricted to virtual meetings in 2021 and 2022, organizers said.

The room at the Crowne Plaza Resort in West Asheville was sold out, with about 900 people in attendance, said Jonathan McCoy, the vice president of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Association of Asheville and Buncombe County. Notable figures like Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer, Buncombe County Commission Chair Brownie Newman, Sheriff Quentin Miller and Congressman Chuck Edwards mingled with the crowd.

But the politician who took center stage and shared his story Jan. 14 was the 28-year-old mayor of small-town Fletcher: Preston Blakely. Blakely, who described himself as an introvert, told the Citizen Times that he was prepared for that story, in large part, by his grandmother.

The founder and longtime organizer of the prayer breakfast, Oralene Anderson Graves Simmons played an important role in local Civil Rights history. In high school she was a member of the Asheville Student Committee on Racial Equality — well known as ASCORE — and in 1961 she became the first Black student to attend Mars Hill College, now Mars Hill University. She has described what she saw during her time at Mars Hill, including a white student donning blackface at a play about the school’s history. At the time, she did not know that the actor was playing her great-grandfather, one of the enslaved people who built the school.

"I would do it again," she said at the prayer breakfast in 2018 about attending Mars Hill. "I would do it today. I did it yesterday for my children and your children, and our grandchildren Black and white."

Oralene Anderson Graves Simmons:Bringing it home: Founder of MLK Jr. Breakfast talks resilience in the face of racism

WNC's Civil Rights history:'You are dad's legacy': 50-plus years later, Leo Gaines gets Asheville High School diploma

More:Asheville officials back police's decision to monitor civil rights groups

Blakely had attended most of the prayer breakfasts his grandmother organized since he was a child, he said. This time he was one of the keynote speakers. He detailed his reason for going into public service and the challenges that he, too, overcame before he was elected to be North Carolina’s youngest mayor.

Even while working in the family business, Quality Janitorial Group, he knew he wanted to give back to the community in other ways, he said.

“Preferably – as crazy as it may sound – in politics,” he told the crowd.

An Asheville High School and UNC Greensboro graduate, Blakely began his political career with a run for town council in 2019. It was a decision that took him only two days to make, he said, and it spurred him and his family into a grassroots campaign marked with heavy door-knocking. At 25, he won the election with 72% of the vote, the Hendersonville Times-News reported.

“I’m forever grateful to the people that helped me get elected,” he said. “I was so excited to be an elected official. I was Councilman Blakely on Fletcher Town Council.”

But even then, he had a self-imposed rule during the campaign, he said.

“Throughout my council campaign, I was always aware of who I was,” he told the crowd. “As a Black man, I did not and I do not have a choice. I never knocked on doors past dark.”

That same rule carried over into a campaign that was far more divisive, he said.

In 2021, when Blakely ran for mayor, unsigned flyers circulated around town and falsely alleged that the Fletcher local was an “Asheville Democrat” and “a liberal-progressive who wants to make Fletcher more like Asheville.” The flyers further claimed that his priorities would be “the urbanization of Fletcher, low-income housing and a racially based allocation of government resources,” the Hendersonville Times-News reported at the time. Only by voting for Blakely’s opponent, Phillip Luther, could Fletcher remain the “small, peaceful town that it is,” the flyers said. Luther adamantly denied any involvement.

“I was quickly reminded, days before the election, that even knocking on doors during the day did not grant me immunity,” Blakely said.

One day before Election Day, he found one of the flyers.

“The flyer was full of dog whistles,” he told the crowd. “I would go as far as saying that these individuals brought out the bullhorn. I read the flyer once more, leaving it where it hung. The flyer whistled loudly that a 27-year-old Black man wanted to be mayor, and that could not happen.”

Nonetheless, it did. Blakely continued the work through Election Day. He won with 55% of the vote.

Though the win was an accomplishment and a testament to progress, there is still much work to be done, he said.

“We’re not that far removed from Rep. (John) Lewis being firebombed, or my grandmother – who is sitting with us here today – being threatened at her college,” he said. “And as I explained, I am not immune to vicious, racist attacks. And although I won the election, I felt an unrelenting bitterness seep into my system.”

He went to the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. and others. Blakely cited King’s 1957 sermon “The Birth of a New Nation,” which outlined some of the civil rights leader’s thoughts after visiting Ghana.

“Let us fight passionately and unrelentingly for the goals of justice and peace,” King said in the speech. “But let’s be sure that our hands are clean in this struggle. Let us never fight with falsehood and violence and hate and malice, but always fight with love, so that when the day comes that the walls of segregation have completely crumbled in Montgomery, that we will be able to live with people as their brothers and sisters.”

Such action would lead to a “beloved community,” King said.

Fletcher's young mayor:Preston Blakely, 27, to be the next mayor of Fletcher

More:Fletcher mayor reflects on first year in office

More:Boyle column: Fletcher's 27-year-old mayor Preston Blakely blazes his own trail

“There is no time to be bitter, and sometimes we have let our hearts speak louder than our brains because there is work to be done,” Blakely said. “The beloved community is one where we are all respected – one where we have access to health care, housing and food. Our beloved community is absent of poverty, prejudice and hate. It is an equitable community.”

Andrew Aydin of Edneyville, another speaker at the event who was a staffer for civil rights leader and Rep. John Lewis, noted that King advocated for more than just “love and brotherhood and judging someone by the content of their character.” King and other civil rights leaders wanted real policy gains, like a living wage, affordable housing, “equitable opportunities in education” and, above all else, voting rights.

“I have been doing this for over 40 years,” Simmons told the Citizen Times after her grandson’s speech. “I had no idea 40 years ago that my grandson would be the keynote speaker. I have booked many speakers from across the nation, people whose names were very well known. But today was a special day for me because my grandson was a keynote speaker at the Martin Luther King Breakfast, and I think he did a wonderful, inspiring speech. I’m proud.”

It was a “full-circle moment,” Blakely said after the breakfast.

“She’s been one of my number-one mentors,” he said. “I always like to see her leadership, and I try to frame mine like hers. I just want to be able to do those same things.”

Asheville resident Sala Menaya-Merrit said she left feeling a stronger sense of community and wanting to be involved more.

“Today is so important because it’s about community,” she said. “It’s about bringing people together. I think there has been so much dissension over the last several years, and this is an opportunity for us to come together and show that we are so much more alike than different. We’re all battling some type of issues, some type of challenges. Just being able to come here today and just see all the love in the room, all the work that’s being done by all different backgrounds, all different races — it does my heart well.”

Other upcoming celebrations of King’s legacy

The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Association of Asheville and Buncombe County has other events planned to celebrate the civil rights leader’s legacy.

Jan. 15: A candlelight service is scheduled for 6 p.m. at Trinity Episcopal Church.

Jan. 16: A peace march and rally will begin at 11:30 a.m. at St. James AME Church.

Ryan Oehrli covers public safety, breaking news and other beats for the Citizen Times. Questions? Comments? Tips? Send them to coehrli@citizentimes.com.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: At Asheville MLK Prayer Breakfast, a family's story shines through