Community gathers in honor of King

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech boomed from a group of motorcycles that revved their engines Monday down St. Johns Avenue to celebrate the Civil Rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

The relatively chilly and breezy weather for this week’s Martin Luther King Jr. Parade brought some residents out to St. Johns Avenue donning thick blankets, sweaters and knit hats. The African-American Cultural Arts Council of Putnam County hosted the parade and festival, which featured local vendors, food trucks and musicians along the riverfront.

Crescent City resident Blair Wolfe and her daughter, Luna, along with DeAnna Sterling and Sterling’s son, Dane, watched as marchers passed by them with signs stating, “The dream lives on” and “embrace diversity.”

“We came to learn about Martin Luther King Jr. and see the parade and support that,” said Wolfe, who homeschools Luna.

Sterling said the children had been learning about the civil rights icon in their homeschooling group and would continue to learn about King’s work.

While attendance along the sidewalks was not as plentiful as other recent parades, the riverfront soon filled with people, where a ceremony marked the occasion and kicked off the day’s festivities.

“This is an opportunity for us to celebrate unity within our own community,” Palatka Mayor Terrill Hill said. “It’s a time for us to look at what the past brought us and understand what the future is.”

On Monday, children ran around the riverfront, and senior students from Palatka Junior-Senior High School’s Junior ROTC program presented the colors for the opening ceremony.

Katrina Williams, a Hastings resident who grew up in Putnam County, made sure to get her seat by the stage before the live music and opening ceremonies began. She brought her grandkids to the event and came out to support a friend of hers who sang in the MLK Day ceremony.

“It means a lot to me,” Williams said about Martin Luther King Day. “I celebrate it every year.”

Former President Ronald Reagan signed the bill to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day the official holiday in 1983, according to the National Constitution Center in Philadephia. However, the nation did not begin observing Martin Luther King Jr. Day until 1986, an United Press International article from January 20, 1986, states.

In Palatka, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People hosted the first “Jubilee Day,” a celebration in King’s honor, on Jan. 20, 1986.

Events spanned two hours at Bethel AME Church in Palatka that day. The Daily News reported on Jan. 21, 1986 that the church service drew a diverse, standing-room-only crowd to celebrate the steps King took to break down the barriers of inequality.

At that event, Rev. Frederick Demps, minister of Palatka’s Calvary Baptist Church, told a crowd that there was still work to be done, more than 20 years after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law in 1964. But he also said King, who was shot in April 1968, did not die in vain.

“Truly, we have seen some great results,” the Palatka reverend said in 1986. “We finally have come to a day that we can join in and say, ‘We shall overcome.’”

Since the inaugural celebration, the scope of Martin Luther King Jr. Day has grown in Putnam County. Events on Monday spanned several hours in Palatka and Crescent City.

Last year’s MLK Day events were canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, and organizers took social distancing into account this year by spacing out the chairs in front of the riverfront pavilion.

Music could be heard booming from the park several blocks down St. Johns Avenue, and the smell of food wafted along the riverfront as the community gathered together.

“(Today’s) an opportunity for us as we look at America as a whole and embrace, truly, what life is when everyone has access and opportunity,” the mayor said. “We’re here to celebrate.”

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