As nearly 10 inches of snow blanketed Williamson on Monday(January 20, 2025) close to one-hundred hearty souls braved the single-digit temperature to honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Redeem Bethel COGIC Community Fellowship Center. The church joined with Wayne Action for Racial Equality (WARE) to celebrate Dr. King’s life with music, testimonials, reflections and awards. Williamson Supervisor, Barry VanNostrand, opened with a welcome on behalf of the town. He was immediately followed by the church pastor, the Rev. Dr. Henry Prior, who deepened the welcome with the opening prayer.

From that moment forward, the Celebration Program inspired all to model Dr. King’s example of continuously fighting to achieve racial and social justice.  Local Wayne County school alumni, Denzel Bissel-Young and April Franklin joined present high-schooler Andrea Silva Pacheco, Redeem Bethel Church Missionary, Ami Thompson and keynote speaker, James Schuler, in sharing how they have negotiated racial injustice in their lives. They each invoked Dr. King’s message to advocate for racial and social justice through collective action, non-violence and unifying love. They emphasized the importance of resilience and perseverance in their personal lives. WARE President, Minister Earl Greene, elevated those concepts with the parable of the donkey and the well. The audience rose to its feet as Minister Greene acted out the donkey’s resilience as its captor tried to bury it with dirt. With each shovelful of dirt, the donkey shook it off and stomped the dirt down until it eventually had packed the piled dirt high allowing it to reach the top of the well. The message illustrated Dr. Martin King’s final speech (“I’ve Been to Mountaintop”) given in Memphis, Tennessee, the day before he was assassinated by White Supremacist, James Earl Ray. Dr. King was in Memphis to support Memphis’ striking sanitation workers. Minister Greene’s stirring words “to shake it off” reminded all that Dr. King stood for more than racial harmony. He was maimed, jailed, spit at, like the donkey, covered by societal dirt yet he passionately fought for economic justice and equity, racial liberation and the recognition of the historic contribution of Black Americans to the success of the United States of America.

As the program remembered King, it also recognized those in Wayne County who deserve recognition with the annual WARE/MLK Awards. Award winners are Martha Black for the Rev. Ivory Simmons Award), Nelly Edinger for the WARE/MLK Citizenship Award, JaQuez Davis (Sodus CSD) and Shavarous Wilcher (Lyons CSD) for the WARE/MLK Student Service Award and Dr. John Lory Ghertner with the WARE Meritorious Lifetime achievement Award.