Annual MLK Day event brings out 200 for march from Shiloh Baptist to downtown Albany

ALBANY — Three speakers fired up marchers on Monday ahead of the walk retracing the footsteps of Albany civil rights pioneers, with a group that included older residents using walkers and canes to toddlers pushed along the route in strollers.

An estimated 200 marchers made the trek from Shiloh Baptist Church to downtown Albany in what has become an annual event on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

“It’s good, especially for young people, especially for them to learn about the history of those who came before them,” said Yolanda Malone, who brought 7-year-old niece Addilyn Grant with her.

For Malone, it was her second year at the event. Last year she came with her sorority sisters from the Sigma Gamma Rho sorority. Area fraternities and sororities were a large part of those in attendance Monday.

“It’s commemorating and continuing Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy. Anything for positivity and peace is really a good thing,” she said.

Monday was the seventh year for the march, and Frank Wilson, who organized the 2022 and 2023 events, said he hopes it will continue well into the future.

“It went great, better than expected,” he said. “I was looking for 100, 150, and we had more than that.

“More than anything else, we had young people; we had a diverse mix of our fraternities and sororities; we had our ministers. It’s a great day.”

The retracing of footsteps is a literal one, as the sidewalk stretching from the church to the government square where the march ended has footprints embedded in the sidewalk.

Shiloh, and the old Mt. Zion Baptist Church building across Whitney Avenue, were the sites of the first mass meetings during the Albany Movement beginning in 1961, and King spoke to congregations at both sites before marchers filed out to make the walk downtown.

“We are on hallowed ground,” said Sherrell Byrd, who along with Tracy Jones and church pastor the Rev. Terry Simmons, addressed the audience ahead of the march.

Rutha Harris, one of the original Albany Freedom Singers, led the crowd in a series of spirituals, and many in the crowd continued singing during the march.

“The road to freedom has been tedious and sometimes it has been treacherous,” Simmons said in his remarks. “But while the road to freedom has been filled with tragedies, it has also been filled with triumphs. We won the right to vote and to equal justice under the law. We have won many victories, but it has not been easy.

“Many of our young people today who reap the benefits wonder about what is the meaning of those footprints. What is the meaning of those footprints for Albanians? … Those footprints remind the young people that those steps weren’t easy to take.”

When black people go to vote, the footsteps are a reminder, Simmons said.

“Hundreds were dragged from their homes and hanged for your right to vote,” the minister said. The footprints “represent our quest for freedom.”

Lydia Olds, a Spanish teacher at International Studies Elementary Charter School in Albany, said she has attended the march each year. In her 21st year in the Dougherty County School System, she said she saw many of her former students as well as some of her current ones.

“I come because I feel that we really need to be together,” she said. “It doesn’t matter your race, if you believe in justice and equality, you still need to participate. This is about loving each other. It doesn’t matter the color of your skin.”

Staff Photo: Alan MauldinAlanMauldin[email protected]
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Staff Photo: Alan MauldinAlanMauldin[email protected]
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Staff Photo: Alan MauldinAlanMauldin[email protected]
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Staff Photo: Scot Morrissey