Butler County community honors King with series of weekend events

For the Rev. Victor Davis and others, no matter if the weather was warm or frigid, snowing or 19 degrees — both snow and cold temperatures were happening Monday — Hamilton’s Martin Luther King Jr. march would go on.

The 32nd consecutive march happened despite the weather, even as events elsewhere were called off. But to Davis, who launched Hamilton’s first march, this year’s event felt a bit different, with national political winds blowing colder than in past years.

As he marched with dozens of others from the Booker T. Washington Community Center toward Hamilton’s downtown, Davis expressed disappointment in President Donald Trump’s reported comments last week that reportedly described African countries and Haiti in explicit and derogatory terms as horrible and filthy places.

Davis also was disappointed by the reaction of some who supported Trump’s comments, but encouraged by those who denounced the president’s remarks. He took some encouragement from the fact that some of Trump’s political allies, including some conservatives, also rejected Trump’s characterization of the countries, despite their alliance with him.

A vehicle playing uptempo Gospel music preceded the Hamilton marchers this year.

A day earlier, in Middletown, “Educating Our Future,” an ecumenical celebration of King’s life organized by Middletown Area Ministerial Alliance, drew a crowd late Sunday afternoon First Presbyterian Church.

Attendees joined together in song and listened to area youth detail the importance of King’s dream.

They gave rousing applause to Community Service Award recipients Carol and David Schul and Drum Major Award recipients and retired educators Monica and Marla Marsh.

They also heard Middletown City Schools Superintendent Marlon Styles, the program’s keynote speaker, detail the importance of finding a difference-maker in one’s life – in his case, his mother and father.

“Not only do we need difference-makers, we need to be difference-makers,” Styles said. “That’s what we’re all here for today, to be difference-makers. I challenge you all to be difference-makers.”

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