Cleveland County town keeps Dr. King's dream alive

There is only one town in the United States named after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and it happens to be nestled right here in Cleveland County.

Located northwest of Shelby, it was originally known as the Eskridge-Weather’s Grove Community in the 1960s and was settled by African Americans.

It wasn’t until 1989 that the small but close-knit community of people was incorporated and officially named after the civil rights giant.

Sharon Martin is one of the town’s champions and a 32 year resident. Martin, who serves as the town's mayor pro tem, has made it her personal mission to make Kingstown known to Cleveland County and beyond.

Originally from a large city in Ohio, she never anticipated settling in a place with a population of 688 people, but after moving to Cleveland County, she ended up needing to find a place to live, and a friend told her about a house for rent in Kingstown. Five years later, she purchased a house and has lived there ever since. She is proud of the little community and sees it as a celebration of the life and legacy of King.

There is a sense of pride in representing the man who inspired the town’s name.

“I'm community minded and civic minded,” Martin said. “My personal goal, as long as I can, is to let people know we exist, and we've got a lot of things going on up here. We’re not a dormant town because we represent Dr. King.”

It was originally supposed to be named Kingston after the main road through the community, but there was already a Kinston and the forefathers wanted a more distinct name. Two senators helped make the name Kingstown a reality.

“The town checked with Dr. King’s attorneys to see if it was OK, and they gave approval,” said Martin. “This is personal, I just want people to know Kingstown exists.”

Kingstown has a town council and two active organizations, Kingston Community Organization for Community Concerns and Kingston Economic Development Corp., which do a lot of civic work.

“Currently we receive three grants, and every month we provide a healthy meal for all our senior citizens 70 and older,” Martin said. We have other events during the year. We collaborated with Atrium Health care, and now we have a virtual health clinic in Kingstown and located in the town hall. We have received some grant money to operate that.”

Martin said when the town was founded, it was made up of all African Americans, but things have changed since then.

“Now quite a few other cultures have moved here. Now maybe 80 percent African American now,” Martin said.

She said the town motto is “Keeping the dream alive,” and they try to grow the town by that principle.

“Even though we're a Black town, we want people to look at it as a town for everyone,” Martin said. “One of Dr. King's dreams is all races living together in peace and harmony. Even when other cultures started moving in, we made them welcome in the town, we wanted everyone in the town to be involved.”

She said they want to continue to live out King’s dream of everyone living together in peace and harmony.

“So that's what we strive for,” she said.

In years past, the town has held a parade in honor of Martin Luther King Day, but with COVID and an aging population, they haven’t been able to hold it this year.

“We’re trying to get younger people involved in what we're doing. We want to keep the dream alive and keep Kingstown in the forefront,” Martin said.

Rebecca Sitzes can be reached at rsitzes@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on The Shelby Star: Cleveland County town keeps Dr. King's dream alive