By Cliff Bellamy

cbellamy@heraldsun.com

DURHAM — Monday marks the official observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but some 60 groups — bands, civic organizations, school groups and businesses — came out for Saturday’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Parade.

Led by motorcycle guards and an honor guard from the Durham County Sheriff’s Office, the parade made its way up Lakewood Avenue and onto Fayetteville Street, past a reviewing stand at the James E. Shepard House at N.C. Central University, and then south on Fayetteville Street.

NCCU Chancellor Charlie Nelms served as grand marshal. It marked his second time participating in the parade, his first as grand marshal.

Moments of celebration, even humor, were seen along the parade route. The NCCU Sound Machine was the first band in the parade lineup, and they kept up an almost constant drum beat that prompted one man to perform a street dance, which drew shouts of approval from the band. Spectators along the route took pictures, clapped, and sometimes danced. A mascot from Mop Top Shop, an organization that puts on technology camps and educational events, posed for photos.

Numerous groups performed. The Durham Senior Divas Cheerleaders chanted a tribute to King. The W.D. Hill Hip Hop Dance Team performed a brief step show. Lowes Grove Middle School also performed. Some organizations tossed candy to the crowd.

But the parade also had reminders of the seriousness of the King Day observance. Three trucks from Durham’s solid waste department bore a quote from King: “One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive,” the quote read. “For the person who picks up our garbage, in the final analysis, is as significant as the physician.”

King was in Memphis, Tenn., to lend support to a sanitation workers’ strike when he was assassinated.

Esther Glenn, a teacher at R.N. Harris Elementary — which also had a group marching, said the sanitation trucks in the parade reminded people of how King’s life and work affected so many people. “It was good to see that people still recognize his contribution all these years” later, and can transmit that message to the young, she said. The parade also provided young people a chance to see organizations they might want to join. “That part is really important, for young people to have a connection to what’s going on in the community,” Glenn said.

Physician Sharon Elliott-Bynum, director and clinical manager of CAARE, Inc., a local free health clinic, said the parade was “so typical of what Durham is, all the diversity, all of the people being themselves,” she said. “What it represented to me was [Dr. King’s] dream coming alive.”

The parade is organized by Phyllis Coley, publisher of Spectacular Magazine, and Triangle Cultural Awareness Foundation, a non-profit run by the magazine. The theme of the parade was “Yesterday’s Dream, Tomorrow’s Reality.”

Nelms said the parade was a chance to honor the strides that have been made in our society. New challenges, different from the time of King, exist, and they are “a reminder of the work we need to do to make Dr. King’s dream a reality,” he said.