MLK Day 2019: Stay woke

Untold communities across the U.S. gathered Monday to commemorate Civil Rights legend Martin Luther King Jr. — this year on what would have been his 90th birthday.

But nowhere else in this great land did they gather at an intersection that also honors another giant of the movement for equal rights who was also the signer of the Voting Rights Act, the 36th President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson.

Elsie Schuknecht, Bethlehem Dusan and Isaac Schuknecht skip down Guadalupe Street together as the march makes its way back to Martin Luther King Drive.

A couple of hundred people, bundled up against a chilly wind, gathered Monday morning at the  Crossroads Memorial  at the intersection MLK and LBJ for an invocation and the reading of a proclamation commemorating King by Mayor Jane Hughson prior to a “silent march” to the First Baptist Church for food, music and speeches.

“This is an awesome, awesome holiday,” said Mittie Miller, who also reminded the crowd there were T-Shirts for sale bearing the theme of this year’s celebration, “Stay woke beyond the dream,” harkening to King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which he delivered in 1963 to a quarter million people.

Timothy Jenkins, Serenity Williams, Faith Williams, Nevaeh Veals and Isaiah Jenkins carry the official banner at the head of the march as they move up South LBJ Drive. 

King and Johnson worked together on Civil Rights legislation, and a depiction of that meeting is an integral part of the design of the Crossroads Memorial.