“We need to speak out,” said Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines during the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Prayer Breakfast on Dr. King’s actual birthday and the celebrated holiday, on Monday, Jan. 15. The Chronicle and the Ministers’ Conference of Winston-Salem and Vicinity sponsored the event.
Victor Johnson was instrumental in organizing the Winston-Salem Sit In Movement. Busta Brown asked which was first, Greensboro or Winston-Salem. He smiles and says, “They sat down first, but we ate first.”
Dr. Louise Toppin, a soprano and renowned scholar of African-American art song, performed freedom songs at Home Moravian Church on Sunday, Jan. 14, as part of the church’s Songs of Justice and Peace program, a Martin Luther King Jr. celebration.