Volunteers serve breakfast at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast at Asbury United Methodist Church on Saturday morning. Tom Markland
SHEPHERDSTOWN – An annual breakfast, hosted by The Jefferson County Black Clergy Association, drew dozens of people to Asbury United Methodist Church to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his legacy.
The yearly breakfast returned last year for the first time since a hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite a snowstorm that caused it to be pushed back nearly a week, dozens of people showed up to celebrate the late Dr. King.
According to Rev. Dr. Paul Brown, the breakfast started around 15 years ago at Wainwright Baptist Church, moving between various churches and firehalls before settling on Asbury Methodist, since their gym can fit the growing amount of people that attend the breakfast every year.
Ticket sales for the event go to funding the Paige Jackson Scholarship Fund, named for a school that educated African- American students in Charles Town, from 1938-1965. It typically awards $1,000 scholarships to up to 10 students every year.
Throughout the breakfast, attendees can listen to a roster of speakers. Brown says that the roster of speakers are primarily younger, as a way to get youth involved in the program.
“We try to get the youth involved,” Brown said. “We have young people speaking, reciting the poems, they’re also singing and playing the musical selections. We have youth-oriented speakers with a message to everyone, but it ties it from the babes to the adults.”
The first speaker, Natasha “Shana” Bradford Johnson, discussed freedom, centering her words around her military career, where she served as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Corps from 2002 to 2023.
She compared freedom to a garden saying, “A garden as large as this country, it requires constant gardening. A garden that diverse requires time consuming tasks to maintain an atmosphere in the garden that is conducive to an environment where all that is planted can thrive,” Johnson said. “I believe that Martin Luther King Jr. was a constant gardener, committed to the idea that freedom must have a healthy environment and adequate nutrients to be so strong and maintain the community for which it was created.”
Following her, Imani Velez, a student pursuing a degree in public administration at George Mason University, discussed justice, saying that despite all the injustices that African Americans face, there’s still hope.
“Now is not the time to give up and feel hopeless,” Velez said. “Americans in the past have endured much worse with much more adversity and have prevailed.”
She encouraged attendees to stay engaged with the political process, while supporting local initiatives they think are important.
“Remember, your knowledge is power,” Velez said. “Your voice is power, your phone is power, the money in your pockets is power, your ability to collaborate is power, voting is power and we, the people, are power.”
Finally, Marques Corbin, a member of Black Men Build, an organization focused on politically organizing black men and their families, spoke about democracy. He espoused the importance if civic engagement,
“Dr. King believed that civic engagement was a cornerstone of a thriving democracy,” Corbin said.
He stressed that people should be continuing to interact with their elected officials even after election season is over, pushing them to better represent their community. He also encouraged people to stay up-to-date on what legislation is being passed and to be involved in local political efforts.
“All civic engagement is not political, but all politics is local,” Corbin said. “We all have a responsibility to make a difference in our communities.”
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