Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast returns to DuPage County, raising nearly $100,000 for public charity fund

In 1994, the then president of Benedictine University, a private Roman Catholic university in Lisle, Illinois, Dr. William J. Carroll organized the first of what would become a yearly celebration of the life and works of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in DuPage County.

The annual breakfast came to an end in 2015 following the retirement of Carroll from Benedictine, only returning nine years later under new stewardship and with a new purpose.

The DuPage County Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Advisory Committee, started by the Oak Brook based real estate agency Inland Real Estate Group, became the organizing body behind the breakfast as well as several MLK events held throughout the county in 2023.

The committee is co-chaired by Senior Vice President of Government Relations at Inland, Dan Wagner, and President of the Unity Partnership, a nonprofit aimed at establishing positive relationships between police officers and civilians, Regina Brent.

Under this new management and through a year’s worth of relationship building, the breakfast was attended by more than 1,200 people, raising an estimated net profit of $100,000 for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Fund of DuPage Foundation, a “permanently-endowed fund seeded by Inland” focused on the funding of public charities that prioritize serving marginalized groups throughout DuPage County.

“Its annual income will generate grants to DuPage County not for profits in the areas of health, human services and education,” breakfast organizer and President of the DuPage Foundation, Mike Sitrick said in an interview with the Tribune.

The foundation intends to give away $10,000 to DuPage not for profits this year, seeding the remaining profits, Sitrick said, with a goal of growing the fund to over a million dollars over the course of the decade.

The breakfast, held at the Drury Lane Theater in Oakbrook Terrace, gave donors a reason to brave the subzero temperatures Monday morning, bringing together religious leaders from the DuPage AME Church in Lisle, to the Masjid Al-Taqwa mosque in Chicago, eight different faith leaders gave blessings, celebrating a common cause.

The breakfast concluded in a musical tribute by Rev. Darius Brooks, the Cathedral of Grace St John’s AME Choir, and the DuPage AME Choir, including the gospel song “We Shall Overcome,” popularized and widely sung during the civil rights movement.

While Drury Lane’s banquet hall was packed Monday, the DuPage County Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Advisory Committee has work left on the table, including events with special needs groups and Native American and Asian American communities.

“When we roll back again in 2025 it’s not just going to be about fundraising, it’s going to be about having projects that we have put in gear so that we can give a report to the people that their donations did not go to waste,” Brent said.

Bob Zellner, an American civil rights activist who was arrested and beaten several times for his work in civil rights activism, was honored as the keynote speaker.

Work in civil rights is never finished and those living in a democracy must constantly work to maintain it, Zellner said in an interview with the Tribune.

“Every action has a reaction, and with the civil rights movement and the women’s movement there’s been a pushback,” Zellner said. “The work ahead is to understand how fragile democracy is and how it has to be worked on every day, and if not it will go away.”