TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Highlands Today

Remembering The Man Of Peace

Kathy Waters/Highlands Today

Parade participants march down Delaney Avenue for the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Avon Park.

ADVERTISEMENT

By Douglas  Carman | Highlands Today

Published: January 22, 2008

Martin Luther King Jr Day Parade Photo Gallery

AVON PARK — A quote on one of the floats aptly described the point of Monday's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. parades, both in Avon Park's Southside and in Lake Placid's Highway Park neighborhood.

"Live the Dream," the backboard of the float read. Three men dressed in a suit, a cap and gown and medical gowns rode with a group of kids as they greeted a crowd of about 600 lining the sidewalks of Delaney Avenue Monday afternoon.

The Junior Diamonds, Senior Diamonds and Baby Diamonds performed marching dance routines while nine children cheer-led for the Avon Park Recreation Center. They came along with four floats, youth groups and church vans among the 21 registered entries, according to Cynthia Barrett, the executive director of the Family Christian Association of America.

At Highway Park, NAACP Highlands County chapter president Brenda Gray said "the march was good," though she could not give a crowd estimate. A call to Major Callahan, who organized the Highway Park parade, was not immediately returned Monday.

Barrett said the "Bringing Down Walls" service Sunday also drew about 400 to 500 spectators.

More To Do

The turnout for the church service actually disappointed her Barrett. She said that even though the mostly black Southside residents and the churches showed up in force for the parade services, there was little response from the predominantly white north side counterparts.

"The Southside wants this to happen, but the churches on the north side didn't want to join," she said of Sunday's unity service at the Faith Pentecostal Church of God. "There were some, but you can count them on both hands."

There were a few more whites and Hispanics in the crowd watching the parade, but they still amounted to approximately 30 of the 600 on Delaney Avenue Monday.

Shortly after what would have been his 79th birthday, some members of the crowd agreed that a form of segregation exists, even this long after the days when King protested the South's segregated society.

Ulysses Brown, 57, worried that racism in the community would always persist as it's passed down the generations. "You still got those types of people... If you don't teach the kids, it just stays in the family."

A Hispanic woman who would only identify herself by her nickname "Natasha" said that in both Avon Park and Sebring, the neighborhoods get rougher on one side of the railroad track.

"It's still separating the blacks and the whites," Natasha said.

Still, Brown and Billy Roberts, 78, both thought those attitudes are a lot better now, if far from where they should be.

"It's like being born again," Roberts said.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT