A parade will make its way through downtown Columbia Monday to mark the area’s observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Participants are asked to begin assembling at the Citizens Bank parking lot in downtown Columbia by 12:15 p.m. The parade will roll through the city at 1 p.m., according to the Rev. R.T. McGowan, president of the Marion County NAACP.
“The parade will proceed down Main Street and then South High School Avenue and on to St. John the Baptist Missionary Baptist Church,” he said. “At 2:30, the celebration will begin. The theme is ‘Still We Rise.’ We’ll have a special guest speaker, Deborah Delgado. She’s on the City Council in Hattiesburg and she’s involved with the NAACP.”
Delgado is entering her fifth term representing Ward 2 in Hattiesburg and is the founder and chairperson of the Historic Mobile Street Renaissance Festival, now in its 12th year. She is a member of the Advisory Council for the National League of Cities, president of the Mississippi Black Caucus of Local Officials Foundation and vice president for trust for the World Conference of Mayors. She has been a board member of the Mississippi Municipal League, and the past president of the Mississippi Black Caucus of Elected Officials.
McGowan said many other people are a part of Monday’s celebration.
“We’ll have a community choir that entertains us,” he said. “We’ll also have a 90-year-old lady who will make remarks, Celeste Barnes McKeon. She’ll have a special poem. We’ll have praise groups from St. Luke Baptist Church and other churches. We’ll have a number of pastors involved. Masonic lodges and all will be involved in the parade and the program.”
McGowan said the annual program has been around for decades.
“We’ve been doing the celebration since the early to mid 1970s, right after Dr. King’s death,” he said. “The parade is more recent. We’ve made it a big event. Weather permitting, our oldest member, Floree Smith, who is 95, will be there.”
The program will be about 1 ½ hours long, according to McGowan, who said he hopes to recruit some new members for the local NAACP chapter Monday.
“We have about 135 members in Marion County,” he said. “Our goal is 500 and we’re working on it.”
Pictured Above: Marion County NAACP members and local Masonic Lodge members march in the 2017 Martin Luther King Day Parade in downtown Columbia. | File Photo
