JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – More than 35 years ago, a team of advocates created Jacksonville’s original Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast. After several years of division recently, with the city and local organizations hosting dueling MLK breakfasts on the same day, Mayor Donna Deegan and other city leaders announced Monday that there will again be a single MLK breakfast in Jacksonville.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Breakfast will be at 7 a.m. on Jan. 12, 2024, at the Prime Osborn Convention Center.
The program will spotlight young student essay winners and will include remarks from Deegan and leaders from the NAACP Jacksonville Branch, Jacksonville Urban League and Jax Chamber.
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“Their organizations are now in equal partnership with the city of Jacksonville, producing what will be a signature event in our city,” Deegan said.
Deegan also announced the addition of a Week of Service in Jacksonville in the week following the breakfast. The City Council is expected to pass a $284,000 budget for the initiative at its meeting Tuesday night.
Members of the team that created Jacksonville’s original breakfast more than 35 years ago, including Bill and Sandy Bond, Ronnie Ferguson, and Luke Sadler, were also at Monday’s announcement.
“They are the reason that we even have a Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast in Jacksonville,” Deegan said. “Nearly 37 years ago, Bill and Sandy returned from an MLK event at Morehouse College in Atlanta and began the process of putting together the city’s very first MLK breakfast.”
Parvez Ahmed, Chief of Diversity and Inclusion for the city, said the theme for January’s breakfast will be “Love and Light: Strength in Unity,” inspired by King’s famous quote: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.”
Isaiah Rumlin, president of the Jacksonville chapter of the NAACP, said the country is too full of hate right now.
“Hate is something that just takes away everything from everybody,” Rumlin said. “We’re going to have to come together as one people regardless of race, color, creed or anything else.”
Deegan said moving past hate and division will take work.
“We have to be willing to get uncomfortable,” Deegan said. “We have to be willing to look at each other, to sit across the table from each other and with love have conversations about things over which we may not agree.”
After antisemitic graffiti showed up on multiple signs in Jacksonville last week, Deegan said events like the unity breakfast are more important than ever.
“It’s going to take all of us to be intentional in this work,” Deegan said. “It’s not enough to just stand up and say, ‘We don’t want these symbols in our community. We don’t believe hate belongs here,’ unless we are taking active steps to reverse that. And that’s going to be hard work: One-on-one, eyeball to eyeball, kneecap to kneecap talking to each other — that’s what’s going to get this work done.”
In a symbol of that intentional effort toward unity, Jax Chamber CEO Daniel Davis, who lost to Deegan in the mayoral election, thanked Deegan for being “incredibly gracious” to both Davis and the business community he represents.
“The Chamber stands behind this unified event,” Davis said. “The business community is better when we’re together. The entire community is better. The workforce is better when we’re pulling the rope in the same direction, and this is one symbol of how we are doing that in Jacksonville, Florida.”
Deegan said, in the end, more people in the city believe in love and unity than in division.
“I think our message has to be that ‘You’re not going to divide us.’ Together, we are going to move forward and have unity here,” Deegan said. “And hopefully we spread that further than Jacksonville.”
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