Moses Lake choir honors Martin Luther King Jr.
Moses Lake choir honors Martin Luther King Jr.
Randy Moore is featured speaker
MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake Gospel Community Choir celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day Monday with live music, scripture readings and prayer.
The celebration is at 6 p.m. at Faith Community Church, 940 East Nelson Road in Moses Lake.
"The Moses Lake Gospel Community Choir looks forward to helping the Martin Luther King program in any way because he was a Christian and represented all races, which is what we are about," said choir director Marva Brown.
Songs the choir is singing include "Lift Every Voice and Sing," "We Shall Overcome" and "I am Redeemed."
The featured speaker this year is Pastor Randy Moore of Say Yes Lord Ministries in Moses Lake.
Moore said his speech is going to be biblically based and likely geared toward a theme of a dream.
"I feel honored that I would be chosen for such a great opportunity to celebrate a man that to me lived and died for all of us to be able to hold hands, and be able to go into the same restaurants and places together," he said.
According to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, King was born in Atlanta, Ga., on Jan. 15, 1929 to Pastor Martin Luther King Sr. King's grandfather, Pastor A.D. Williams, founded the Atlanta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. King earned his doctorate in systematic theology in 1955. He helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957.
In 1963, King and the conference led demonstrations in Birmingham, Ala. President John F. Kennedy brought a civil rights bill to Congress before his assassination the same year. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, when he was 35 years old. He was assassinated in 1968.
Brown said King was a Baptist minister who behaved in a Christian way.
"He did things decent and in order, and he was nonviolent," she said. "He taught others that followed him the same. He encouraged others to be nonviolent."