“We are not simply celebrating Dr. King’s legacy this year but coming together to publicly vow to protect it from those who wish to undo his work,” said Sharpton in a statement about his organization’s observance of the King holiday. “Right now, the Civil Rights Act he pushed President Johnson to pass in 1964 is under relentless attack, voting rights for Black Americans are being chipped away in dozens of states, and diversity in Corporate America is on the brink.”
The breakfast, said the Rev. W. Franklyn Richardson, a New York-area pastor who chairs both the NAN and CNBC’s boards, will kick off a joint campaign to connect with some 31,000 congregations affiliated with the Black church conference and the dozens of chapters of Sharpton’s network to train pastors to, in turn, educate congregants in the voting process.
“We plan to use every vehicle, every asset available to us to try to give attention to this election in November, and we’re starting early because we don’t believe we can do it in the last three months of the election season,” he said.
Richardson said using King Day to emphasize voting in the months ahead is appropriate because of the civil rights leader’s advocacy for voting rights.
“He used the process of political participation, driven by a clear mandate of social justice of the gospel to get our people to participate in elections,” he said. “I think Martin Luther King has set the paradigm for the church’s participation in this process. And we can’t go to sleep on it. We got to sound the alarm that our participation is vital.”
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This article originally appeared on ReligionNews.com.
