For another year, hundreds of revelers participated in a peace walk and parade in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They did so with Nee Nee Taylor of Harriet’s Wildest Dreams serving as a grand marshal.
For Taylor, who just laid her brother, Ward 7 community leader John Fitzgerald Cotten, to rest, leading the 21st annual Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Holiday DC Peace Walk and Parade took on a deeper meaning.
“This parade we’ve been doing since we were in elementary school,” Taylor told The Informer as she pointed to a pin on her jacket bearing Fitzgerald’s image. “That’s why I brought him with me to the parade with me. We believe in the dream…that one day all of our people will be free.”
As ICE and HSI wreak havoc on District residents and migrants, Taylor said that freedom has to be an all-hands-on-deck effort, and one in which frontline organizers highlight the sins of all law enforcement agencies, not just those under Department of Homeland Security.
“ICE is nothing but the slave patrols, but they’re not recognizing it as a slave patrol because when you think about the slave patrol, you think about Black people,” Taylor said. “They speak of it as if it’s OK [to] just fight for the migrants. But the message is that [if] we have to get ICE out, it has to be all of them [agencies].”
It’s a matter of interconnectivity, Taylor told The Informer.
“Our struggles intersect,” she said, “so as you’re saying ‘ICE out,’ say ‘Abolish all law enforcement.’”
Another Peace Walk & Parade for the Books
Throughout much of the morning and early afternoon on Jan. 19, community members stood on the sidewalks of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in Anacostia as marching bands, public and public charter schools, D.C. government entities, Divine Nine organizations, political candidates, and everyone else in between marched behind Taylor and other grand marshals in honor of King.
Those other grand marshals included: Charles Gussom of Martha’s Table, King Holiday D.C. Peace Walk and Parade committee member Dejuan Mason; the Revs. Dennis W. and Christine Wiley, former pastors of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ; and Romeo Spaulding, founder of the D.C. Progressive Firefighters Association.
For Denise Rolark Barnes, co-chair of the King Holiday D.C. Peace Walk and Parade, the magic of the annual celebration lies in heavy involvement of youth, as seen in Gussom, who, long before becoming a grand marshal, participated in other ways.
“Charles marched in the parade when he was in elementary school. He won an essay contest when he was in middle school, and he marched in the parade with Ballou in high school,” Rolark Barnes said. “Here he is now as a grand marshal. And the outreach work that he does at Martha’s Table as director of community programs is symbolic of the work that Dr. King said we have to do for our communities.”
This year’s rally, walk and parade, themed “The Struggle is Real, the Fight is Still,” started on Firth Sterling Avenue SE, near Barry Farm Recreation Center. Legions of participants, many standing on floats, and several more walking behind colorful banners, marched along Sumner Road SE before turning on the avenue named in honor of the late civil rights martyr.
A significant portion of the festivities then took place along the major corridor, between Sumner Road and Marion Barry Avenue SE.
Near the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and Marion Barry Avenue, revelers took part in a health and wellness fair. Rolark Barnes and retired journalist Sam Ford executed their duties as mistress and master of ceremonies as they brought to the stage: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser; former D.C. first lady Cora Masters Barry; Melanie Campbell of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation; and D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb, among others.
For Rolark Barnes, the speakers had a common message.
“They saw an outpouring of support from not only the Ward 8 community, but the community of D.C. residents,” Rolark Barnes said. “That gathering is symbolic of the unity that they want to see more of in D.C. as a reflection of Dr. King and what he strived for.”
On Jan. 15, 1979, what would have been King’s 50th birthday, Calvin Rolark, founder of The Washington Informer and Rolark Barnes’ late father, hosted the inaugural King parade in collaboration with his wife and then-Ward 8 Councilmember Wilhelmina Rolark and radio personality Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene.
Around the time of the parade’s inception, D.C. counted among a growing number of cities and states leading the charge for a federal holiday in King’s honor. Thanks to Corretta Scott King, the late Michigan Rep. John Conyers (D), Stevie Wonder, and several others, that vision came to fruition in 1983 when President Ronald Reagan (R) signed a King holiday bill into law.
Veteran organizer Roger Glass still reflects on that moment.
“We earned it 50-plus years ago,” said Glass, a founding member of Concerned Black Men of D.C. and one of several people who marched alongside Wonder, comedian-activist Dick Gregory and the Rev. Jesse Jackson on Pennsylvania Avenue NW in pursuit of a federal King holiday.
On Jan. 19, Glass represented Concerned Black Men of D.C. as a dozen members held up a bright red banner and marched along Martin Luther King Avenue. Glass, who’s also a founding member of the Washington Association of Black Journalists, marveled the intergenerational exchange of energy unfolding in Downtown Anacostia.
“It’s a blessing not just to march, but to see all the young people out here in the [marching] bands because they’re the future,” Glass told The Informer.
However, Glass acknowledged that the fight continues, especially with President Donald J. Trump refusing to recognize the King holiday and Juneteenth via any presidential proclamations and inclusion on the National Park Service’s list of fee-free days.
“We thought we had finished some of these battles,” Glass told The Informer. “Now you’ve got an administration talking about [how] they want to erase some of our history. They want to turn back the clocks, not just on African Americans, but on our Latino brothers and sisters.”
Glass said that the Trump administration cannot fulfill its white supremacist vision without Black people’s permission. That’s why he pledged to fight for what he called his ancestral right.
“There’s no way that they’re going to tell me that we don’t belong here,” Glass said. “We built this.
We’re going to stay here and we’re going to fight for others who deserve to be here.”
A Fight For D.C.’s Future
Earlier in the morning, several youth took to an outdoor stage near the intersection of Sumner Road and Fifth Sterling Avenue in Southeast to reflect on the legacy of King, an opponent of racism, imperialism, and capitalism who attended Morehouse College at the age of 15.
For the second time in three years, Andre Simmons Jr. counted among that number. He said he did so on behalf of young people ready to take on the mantle of leadership in their communities.
“It’s important for people around my age, and young people in general, to give a message because everybody would like to hear from the youth,” said Simmons, 18, a member of Bard Peace Makers. “We’re the next generation to have a great point in our lives. There are already adults out here, but they want to see the youth get better, improve, and have a life going on right now.”
Simmons, a senior at Bard DC Early College High School, said he aspires to help others, either through engineering, nursing, teaching, or nonprofit leadership. He said that his community stands at the center of his goals, because it’s how he grew as a leader.
“The community around you is always going to be a good place for you to feel safe and feel supported,” Simmons said. “Even when somebody doesn’t know you, they’ll still be right there behind you to pick you up.”
Entities that participated in the march included: Harriet’s Wildest Dreams; Pep Rally for Peace in the Streets, Progressive Fire Fighters Association of D.C.; Free DC; Marion Barry Youth Leadership Institute; Dunbar High School’s Crimson Tide Battalion; Whitman Walker Clinic; Covenant Baptist Church, and Excel Academy Public School for Girls.
The parade also provided an opportunity for mayoral, congressional and down-ballot candidates to make their presence known. One of those candidates, a Ward 7 resident and organizer, said she had some of King’s prophetic words on her heart on Monday.
“My favorite [was] Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail,” said Dyana Forester, a D.C. Council at-large candidate. “It’s when he agitated people into direct action. That’s what his legacy means to me. It’s the foundation of what I do as a community organizer.”
Forester, a native Washingtonian of Mexican and African-American ancestry, participated in previous parades as an Anne Beers Elementary School cheerleader. She said, decades after that childhood experience, little has changed for D.C. residents living east of the Anacostia River.
“I left Ward 8 to go to [what was then called] Wilson Senior High School,” Forester told The Informer. “Twenty years later, I sent my daughters to Jackson-Reed High School and schools west of [Rock Creek] Park. So I feel like we need to improve our quality of education to combat crime and give youth an opportunity to do something positive with their lives.”
Also on Forester’s mind as of late is the District’s precarious situation.
“We want to get out in the streets and protest, but unfortunately, without statehood, Congress and the administration has control over our budget,” Forester said. “So we have to figure out how to fight back strategically and united. We got a lot of diversity in this city, and one thing that I know unites us is our values for democracy.”
At a time when the Trump administration is making great efforts to erase Black history, Taylor sees the peace walk and parade as one of catalysts that will further affirm the necessity of Black liberation, a cause she’s fought for long before the second Trump presidency.
“I’m honored to lead this, because it shows that we’re going to still keep fighting,” Taylor told The Informer. “We’re going to still keep rising up, and we’re going to free our people. Black lives do matter, and we’re in this fight just like everybody else. We just need everybody to know that all of our struggles intersect, and none of us are free until all of us are free.”