Speakers stress unity at Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[People of all denominations gathered for devotion Monday at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast sponsored by Mt. Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church.
The sponsoring church was Baptist, but the call was for Christian unity to continue the work of King and his allies.
"There is only one church -- the church of Christ," the Rev. Donald Stewart, the host pastor, said.
The first of two guest speakers, the Rev. Leroy Lockridge, pastor of Galilee Missionary Baptist Church in Carrier Mills, reminded the crowd Jesus was a carpenter and Moses was a keeper of flocks. This lesson should stress equality in the eyes of God, he said.
"Each of our skills is important to all of us," Lockridge said.
King was born into the segregated South, in Georgia, in 1929. At some point, he went to the north and worked, where he got a taste of relative freedom, Lockridge said. On the return train ride home, King was moved back to a segregated train car when the train crossed into Virginia. The trip and conditions in the South led him to complete his education to help bring about change in his hometown.
"The community can't be any better than the people who live there," Lockridge said. "The church can't be better than the people in it."
King studied divinity at Morehouse College and accepted a ministry in Montgomery, Ala. The ministry, of course, came at a pivotal time in history.
Lockridge reminded the crowd of King's message of non-violence.
"Hate is like poison. I want to see you dead, but I am drinking the poison," Lockridge said.
Lockridge closed with a song, "How did you feel when you came out of the wilderness," suggesting the song applied to black men and women in America.
Bishop Albert Ingram Jr., pastor of Olivet Freewill Baptist Church in Carbondale, took a thread from Lockridge about coming out of the wilderness. He was born and reared in Tennessee, "In a very dark time for our nation, for our people."
His region of Tennessee, about 75 miles east of Memphis, was one of the last to integrate. The area schools integrated in about 1970.
"I remember personally being asked to leave the theater. I remember not being able to sit on the school bus," Ingram said.
How does he feel now?
"I am not out of the wilderness yet, but I can see the light," Ingram said.
The problem now is economics -- black Americans still lag behind economically. Creating prosperity so children will be able to stay and prosper in their own communities is key to the future, he said.
He also suggested a problem that probably had many ministers in the room -- and there were quite a few -- nodding their heads: Immorality. Immorality breaks down communities, he suggested.
"I believe we need to get back to the old landmarks," Ingram said.
The Women of Faith, Betty Perry, Arnetha McDonald, Judy Hodge, Lisa Bacon and Antoinette Harris, sang several songs throughout the program and performed a tribute to six men who are pivotal in the civil rights movement. Five of the six, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and King, died by assassins' bullets. The sixth was President Barack Obama.
"These men wore the armor of trials and tribulations and carried the swords of righteousness," Hodge said.