Breakfast Honoring Martin Luther King Opens MLK Holiday in Triangle

CBC enjoys its 18th year as sponsor of the Martin Luther King Triangle Interfaith Prayer Breakfast.

The winter weather over the weekend may have put a damper on several marches, but the 27th Annual Martin Luther King Triangle Interfaith Breakfast went off without a hitch.

Almost 2,000 citizens from all around the Triangle area started the MLK holiday with an 8am breakfast and an impressive slate of speakers at the Sheraton Imperial in Research Triangle Park.

A long list of area clergy, elected officials, executives and education leaders offered a variety of prayers and thoughts on the historic day. CBC had two speakers from the podium. CBC Vice President of Community Relations Paul Pope provided a welcome at the beginning of the program, and CBC President & CEO Jim Goodmon introduced keynote speaker The Rev. Dr. Charles E. Booth.

“I know beyond the shadow of the doubt that Martin Luther King was more than a civil rights leader. Before he was a civil rights leader, he was a preacher.”
– Rev. Dr. Charles Booth,
MLK Breakfast keynote speaker

Booth hails from Columbus, Ohio, where he has pastored the Mount Olivet Baptist Church for the past 28 years. A Howard University graduate, he also serves as a professor at several seminaries.

Booth spoke about “The Unfinished Task in Less Competent Hands.” He opened referring to a passage in Exodus for his speech, about God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses. Booth said God offered them as “guiding compass as they encounter the many challenges of the Promised Land.”

Triangle United Way President Craig Chancellor serves as Presiding Officer of the MLK Breakfast.

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“Yet with all of our strides in education, technology, economics and the like. All of us, if we are honest, we must confess that the world is really not better off,” he said. “There are still mountains to climb, there are still valleys to forge, there is still ignorance to educate, there are still hungry bellies that must be filled. Yet with all of our accomplishments, with all our attainments, the task before us is unfinished.”

Booth said that MLK day is a blessing and a curse. He called it a curse because once “every 365 days we pull Dr. Martin Luther King out of the vault.” He said that once the speeches have been made and we go back to normal life, “the task is unfinished when you look at the landscape … the dream appears to be in less competent hands.”

“The hands are less competent because we have taken God out of the human equation,” he said. Booth’s comments met with thunderous applause, and many people leaped out of their seats as he spoke.

“If you don’t understand anything else about Martin Luther King, then understand … not one time did he ever capitulate to the cause.”

Members of the audience jump to their feet as Dr. Charles Booth delivers the keynote address.

“It’s still obvious, at least to me, that the fight for justice, for the human dignity and equality for all people is still very much a dream.”
– Rev. Dr. Charles Booth,
MLK Breakfast keynote speaker

Capitol Broadcasting Company has been a sponsor of the MLK Triangle Interfaith Breakfast for the past 18 years. The breakfast is free and open to the public. Over the years the breakfast has evolved into the flagship event to start the MLK Holiday activities in the Triangle.

Watch the Breakfast
The WRAL Newschannel broadcast the breakfast on the WRAL NewsChannel on Mon, Jan 21, 2008, at 8pm. A re-broadcast of the 2 ½ hour event will take place on Tues, Jan 22nd at 11am.