Myrtle Beach honors Dr. King dream in growing show of unity

A nearly hour-long parade of people from different ethnicities stepped down Ocean Boulevard Monday afternoon. They walked to the beat of different drums from the U.S. Navy Marching Band to a Georgetown drum line to the pounding throbs of a Native American kettle drum. But they stepped together – in a show of unity for a man who had a dream of a country undivided.

The parade marked a final tribute in a three-day Freedom Rally celebrating the life, vision and achievements of slain civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The tribute began as a one-day event in Myrtle Beach. But the 10-year-old celebration continues to grow.

This year’s events included a business and opportunity workshop, a job fair, a forum, a “Carolina Has Talent” Gospel Explosion featuring seven music groups, a Civil Rights Sunday ecumenical service, a breakfast and a parade.

The 10^th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Corporate & Community Awards Breakfast on Monday morning featured political headliners U.S. Sen. Tim Scott and Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson, who was in town for the S.C. Tea Party Coalition Convention that also wrapped up Monday.

“Our diversity is not a problem, it is a strength and we have to stop allowing ourselves to be divided,” Carson told a crowd of nearly 250 guests in the Mary C. Canty Recreation Center.

Carson, Scott and Bennie Swans, who chaired the committee that organized the rally, echoed King’s message of unity at the breakfast.

“The purveyors of division have come in and they have wreaked havoc in our society,” Carson said, mentioning wars on equality, race, income, age and religion. “Jesus Christ himself said and it was echoed by Abraham Lincoln, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ It never has stood. It never will stand.

“We need to start emphasizing what we have in common,” Carson said. “We need to start working together because believe me there are radical Islamic jihadists. They want to destroy us and we should not be helping them by trying to destroy ourselves. We have to be smarter than that. And that’s, I’m sure, something Dr. King would have said.”

Carson told the crowd to “come back to your roots. What made the black community in America strong? What got them through slavery and Jim Crow and segregation and racism? It was faith and family,” he said. “As we’ve allowed those things to depart from us, we have seen the massive decay that’s going on and we have to be willing … to stop the madness.”

Scott (R-SC) told the crowd the three key components to a better future are making sure all people have a good educational foundation, a strong work ethic and know the importance of a dream.

He compared King’s struggle to the Biblical story of David and Goliath. “A southern preacher taking on the political class, the business class and America, an impossible struggle… and improbable victory brought to us because he understood how to penetrate the heart,” Scott said. “You see all the progress that we hope to make, can’t be made by politicians. We are not the success of America, you are. … If you will remember your dream, our collective dream is possible.”

As he looked out on a room full of people of different races and backgrounds, Scott said King had a dream of unity.

“He believed … that a room like this would be possible, that black men and white men, that Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, would join hands and sing with new meaning, ‘Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty’ we will be free at last,” Scott said.

This story was originally published January 18, 2016 at 3:59 PM with the headline "Myrtle Beach honors Dr. King dream in growing show of unity."