MLK Prayer Breakfast goes virtual

The pandemic will not prevent the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Prayer Breakfast from being held in January, but the celebration will be held virtually via Zoom, organizers said.

“It will be all virtual and different,” said NAACP Branch No. 6013 President Linda Franklin, who noted the breakfast has been held for the past 22 years.

Marsalis Weatherspoon, current branch vice president who was elected to be Franklin’s successor as president in 2021, said the decision to hold the event virtually was an easy one.

“Number one, there’s a nationwide moratorium through national offices. We can’t hold in-person (events) if we wanted to. We didn’t want to not have the breakfast,” Weatherspoon said.

The event acts as a fundraiser for the branch, Franklin said, with the money from ticket sales used in several ways such as giving a scholarship to a graduating high school student. As this breakfast will be virtual, it will be free to attend. Rather than relying on ticket sales for the fundraiser, they have created a booklet and are selling ads for it, she said.

“Instead of selling breakfast, we’ll do a souvenir booklet, and are encouraging people to buy ads,” Franklin said.

This will be the third year they have created a booklet for the breakfast and both of the previous booklets were successful, Franklin said, noting, “The last two years, we actually did well.” The first book was 40 pages and the second book was 56 pages.

“We at least hope the amount (of advertisers) we had before will come back, and hope for some sponsorships,” Franklin said.

Weatherspoon said the cost is $120 for a full-page ad, $60 for half a page, $30 for a quarter of a page and $10 for a patron ad.

For the virtual breakfast, Weatherspoon said they hope attendees approach it as they would an in-person event. “We want people to dress up,” he said, noting each virtual attendee can make their own breakfasts in their home and virtually dine together in the “spirit of camaraderie.”

The keynote speaker will be LaColis Reed Jr., a graduate of Historic Langston Junior/Senior High School, a news release said. Franklin said the theme of the breakfast is “Justice is what love looks like.”

While the event will be held via Zoom, an online video conferencing platform, they also plan to share it to Facebook, Weatherspoon said. Those who cannot attend will be able to watch it afterward.

“We’ll have the video archived, definitely,” Weatherspoon said.

“It’s always a good time,” he said, noting they “want people to come away feeling inspired, a time of new beginning, instill a sense of hope for the community.”

“I am supporting it. I think it will go well,” Elmer Beard, branch secretary and former president, said of the virtual event. “I encourage ( participants) to approach it as if it were in-person.”

Weatherspoon said the branch started using Zoom soon after the pandemic started and he attended a state conference virtually. The success of that conference, he said, gave him confidence a virtual breakfast could work for the branch.

For those unfamiliar with Zoom, Weatherspoon recommended signing into the meeting early so any problems can be worked out. He compared it to arriving at an in- person breakfast early to find a parking spot and locate a table.