Concert, banquet and rally highlight Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Tuscaloosa
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The observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Tuscaloosa will feature a Unity Day March and the Realizing The Dream celebration, which will include a Legacy Awards Banquet and concert at the University of Alabama.
Here's what you need to know for Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration in Tuscaloosa:
Unity Day
Tuscaloosa's annual Unity Day celebration will be held on Jan. 15. The day's events are being organized by the Tuscaloosa chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Unity Day activities will begin at 8 a.m. at Beulah Baptist Church, 3100 25th St., with a Unity Day breakfast. Tickets cost $15 in advance and $20 at the door. The Rev. Ricky McKinney, pastor of the Weeping Mary Missionary Baptist Church, will serve as the keynote speaker.
Around noon, participants will line up for the Unity Day march, which will begin at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, 2430 Martin Luther King Blvd., and end at Tuscaloosa City Hall, 2201 University Blvd. Participants must be lined up by 11:30 a.m.
A "Rally and Stand for Justice" will be held at 4 p.m. at First African Baptist Church, 2621 Stillman Blvd., to conclude the Unity Day celebration. The time of the rally will be announced later. The speaker will be the Rev. Lonnie Weaver of Saint Paul Missionary Baptist Church.
Realizing The Dream
Tuscaloosa's Realizing The Dream celebration will include an awards banquet and a concert. This year's theme will be: "Realizing the Dream Through Vision and Leadership."
The 15th annual Realizing the Dream Legacy Awards Banquet will be held at 6:30 p.m. Friday in the Sellers Auditorium at the Bryant Conference Center, 240 Paul W. Bryant Drive.
Journalist Clarence Page will be this year's banquet speaker. Page is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and a columnist syndicated nationally by Tribune Media Services.
He is the author of a best-selling book, “Showing My Color: Impolite Essays on Race and Identity.”
Doug Jones, a former U.S. senator from Alabama, will receive the Call to Conscience Award. Jones, who grew up in Fairfield outside of Birmingham, served as U.S. attorney in the Clinton administration and reopened the prosecution of two of the Klansmen who bombed a Birmingham church in 1963, killing four Black girls.
Jones was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2017 to fill out the term of Jeff Sessions, who left the Senate to serve as then-President Donald Trump's attorney general. Jones was the first Alabama Democrat to be elected to the U.S. Senate since 1992.
Jones was defeated by former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville in a bid for a full Senate term.
After time in the Senate, Jones has served as a distinguished senior fellow with the Center for American Progress, focusing racial justice, equality, voting rights and law enforcement reform. He has also been a commentator on CNN and has advised the Biden administration on various political and legal matters.
Also during the Realizing the Dream Legacy Awards Banquet, former Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington Jr. will receive the Mountaintop Award. Arrington, a native of Livingston in Sumter County, was Birmingham's first Black mayor, serving five terms from 1979 until 1999.
Stillman College student Adebola Aderibigbe will receive the Horizon Award.
Banquet tickets cost $30 per person or $200 for a table of eight. Dress is semiformal.
The Realizing the Dream Concert, featuring gospel artist Jason Nelson will begin at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the University of Alabama’s Moody Music Concert Hall, 810 Second Ave. Concert tickets are $20.
Tickets for both events at UA are available online at ua.universitytickets.com.
About Martin Luther King Jr.
King, who was born in Jan 15, 1929, in Atlanta, rose to prominence as a civil rights leader after he moved to Alabama. While serving as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, King led a series of highly publicized civil rights campaigns in between 1955 and 1965 in Alabama, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
In 1964, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership in the struggle for racial equality.
King was killed by an assassin on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee
On Nov. 2, 1983, then-President Ronald Reagan signed into law a bill creating a national holiday to honor King after the bill was passed by Congress. The holiday was observed for the first time on Jan. 20, 1986.
Reach Jasmine Hollie at JHollie@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: How to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday in Tuscaloosa
