Mark Woods: Jacksonville's MLK Day gatherings about more than breakfast

Amidst all the chaos and conflict, the sense of people and places being pulled farther apart, there was at least a bit of good news in Jacksonville.

On the second Friday in January, Jacksonville plans to have a 37th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Breakfast.

One breakfast, not two separate ones.

Details are yet to come, but this alone is something positive.

This hasn't happened since 2017.

In the years since then, Jacksonville has had two MLK Breakfasts, one led by the city, one by the NAACP. It was ironic, symbolic and, perhaps most of all, sad.

These were tumultuous years in America, years in which the past felt remarkably present. These years included echoes of what led to the March on Washington 60 years ago, issues involving economics, equality, civil rights, voting rights, justice and history. They included George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, politics and pandemic, January 6th, and ongoing battles over a Civil War that supposedly ended more than 150 years ago.

They included lingering reminders of why MLK went to Memphis in 1968, to support striking sanitation workers, and how a champion of non-violent protest died a violent death.

The dueling MLK breakfasts were a sad sign of where we were — and where, to be realistic, in many ways we still are.

One breakfast doesn't instantly change that. But unity was something Mayor Donna Deegan campaigned on. So credit to her and her staff (particularly Parvez Ahmed, chief of diversity and inclusion) and to the NAACP, local chapter president Isaiah Rumlin and others.

As MLK once said: “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”

This doesn’t mean everyone who gathers for one MLK breakfast has to agree upon everything. That clearly isn’t the case, even within any one race, religion or anything else. (We sometimes fall into the trap of thinking of groups as having monolithic views. That’s hardly ever true. It wasn't with the breakfasts.)

But there is value in gathering, talking and — as the late Leon Haley said at the city event in 2021 — listening.

"We are all the same on the inside,” said Haley, the UF Health Jacksonville CEO who died six months later. “We all bleed red. Same lungs, same heart. But we also have to accept the differences — and listen."

One of the interesting questions for the next breakfast: When people gather for it, what keynote speaker will they end up listening to?

An MLK breakfast should be a feel-good event — but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a feel-discomfort one.

In fact, to truly honor MLK’s legacy, it should be both.

Some of today’s politicians have taken MLK’s life and legacy and boiled it down to 35 words from his famous 17-minute speech: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin by the content of their character.”

Those words certainly were powerful then and now. But the way this one quote is wielded — even using it to attack civil rights programs or, in Florida, promote the “Stop Woke Act” — twists the message and ignores what else King talked about in that same speech, including systemic racism and systemic poverty. It whitewashes his messages, making them more comforting and comfortable.

That ties into one criticism I heard of the city’s event. While it included a diverse cross-section of the city, and brought in speakers who had inspirational life stories and messages, it was prone to ignoring, or carefully tip-toeing, around not only the past but the present. And a lot is happening in the present.

When the NAACP withdrew from the city’s event, one reason its leaders gave was that they didn’t feel like they had a “real seat at the table” in the planning of the breakfast.

At the time, many assumed it would be a one-year blip. It wasn't.

A few years into the two-breakfast celebrations, the theme of the NAACP event was taken from the title of King’s fourth and last book: “Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community.”

At the time, Rumlin said: "We're going to have to address hate groups in the community."

In the years since, it feels like hate has only escalated. And not just in other parts of the nation or world. Particularly, painfully, in Jacksonville.

In just the last 12 months …

We’ve seen neo-Nazis project swastikas onto downtown buildings.

We’ve seen people who say they aren’t white supremacists (but happen to have quite a few acquaintances who are white supremacists) fly banners over the football stadium.

We’ve seen a gunman, wielding a rifle emblazoned with swastikas, kill three Black people at the Dollar General.

The hate sometimes has come from beyond Jacksonville. But it has been drawn to Jacksonville. Repeatedly.

So it seems fitting that the next MLK breakfast will address hate.

The “Tomorrow’s Leaders” student essay topic contest comes from MLK’s 1963 book “Strength to Love.”

That book, a collection of sermons, includes idealistic words that, sadly, feel quite relevant 60 years later: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

That same year, in his "I Have A Dream" speech, MLK said that he dreamed one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the descendants of former slaves and former slave owners would be able "to sit together at the table of brotherhood."

While he wasn't just talking about a breakfast, there is something to be said for sitting down, breaking bread and reflecting on his words. And not just 35 of them.

It would be naive to think this one breakfast instantly changes anything. But it’s a symbolic step in the right direction. And in a time full of so many steps backward, that alone is worth celebrating.

mwoods@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4212

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville finally back to one MLK Day Breakfast