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Local groups celebrate MLK’s legacy

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The themes of Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration in Jackson with the Jackson-Madison County NAACP and other sister organizations were “Fight Twice as Hard” and “We’re Not Going Back.”

The day started with a breakfast at the T.R. White Sportsplex that included historical presentations by Lane College students about King himself and the NAACP organization.

A few youth groups including the NAACP Youth Council, Phi Delta Kappa Xinos & Kudos, Delta Sigma Theta Gems and Top Teens of America gave presentations of their own with their respective interpretations of “If Dr. Martin Luther King was here today.”

After the breakfast, NAACP President Harrell Carter was joined by about 60 people who stood behind and with him in solidarity as he made a statement against the proposed education voucher proposal Gov. Bill Lee has called a special legislative session for the State General Assembly and Senate to discuss and possibly pass.

His statements were joined by Sabrina Parker, president of the local chapter of the National Action Network, and County Commissioner Tony Black. 

After that time, the majority of the group marched from the Sportsplex up College Street, down Church Street, turning onto Main Street and then turning onto Shannon Street to Mt. Zion Baptist Church, where Rev. Curtis Mormon and the church hosted the keynote address of the day from Bolivar Mayor Julian McTizic.

McTizic was first elected as Bolivar’s Mayor in 2017, and he’s the first Black mayor of the town in Hardeman County. He won re-election in 2021 by the largest margin in the town’s history.

McTizic reflected on the history of Black citizens of the United States and their start as slaves brought over from Africa and everything Black citizens had to fight for after gaining their freedom in the 1860s after the Civil War including being counted as a full citizen, the right to vote, the Civil Rights fight of the 1950s and 60s up to today.

“Fortunately I’m not old enough to remember a time where I had to drink from a Negro fountain or go in a different bathroom or the back door of a business establishment,” McTizic said. “I have the freedom to go where I want to go because of the fight many of you fought before my time, and on behalf of my generation, I thank you for fighting that fight.”

McTizic did point out a series of things the nation did in the 1960s and 70s that hasn’t helped Black America since the Civil Rights movement.

“At the beginning of the early Twentieth Century, 80 percent of Black families had a husband and a wife in the home,” McTizic said. “But when President (Lyndon) Johnson’s administration passed social reforms like EBT, public housing, WIC, food stamps, Medicare.

“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with any of those things, but when they were passed that gave the Black man the permission to leave the home because the government was going to help raise their babies. But studies have shown how much differently a child’s upbringing is when both parents are in the home or at least present for the child and helping rear those children up. That’s been a problem for Black youth that’s only getting worse.”

McTizic pointed out some flaws with the criminal justice system as well. He mentioned how some citizens are serving time in jail for smoking marijuana while other citizens who are abusing more serious medications are treated as having a mental illness and do no time in prison.

After discussing how big of a fight that can and will be if it’s fought, McTizic made the point that anything a person can do for the positive is still something positive that can be done.

“Everybody raise your hands,” McTizic said. “The hands that invented the gas mask and traffic signals were Black hands just like these and ones I’m seeing all over this place.

“It was Black hands like these that found all the different things that can be done with something as simple as the peanut. And it’s these Black hands that will continue to fight twice as hard as the fight that’s been fought in the past, because we’re not going back.”

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news