Amid 3rd cancellation of MLK Day parade, activists demand reversal

Devon Sears is disappointed that Baltimore’s Martin Luther King Jr. Parade has been canceled once again.

Sears, 42, has been going to the parade since she was about 3. She enjoys watching the marching bands, eating at different food vendors and admiring the city as it comes together to commemorate King’s life.

“Civil rights is something that we still have to fight for. We still have to struggle for the equality,” said Sears, who is from West Baltimore. “Celebrating him and all the accomplishments that [King] did for us as a Black person, as a woman and just as a community, show that we still appreciate him and we see the sacrifice that he made.”

She added the city should reschedule something for later even though it wouldn’t be on King’s birthday.

Baltimore activists and leaders called for change after the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts, known as BOPA, canceled the parade for the third year in a row. The city held its annual parade for decades before the coronavirus pandemic forced a halt to it in 2021.

BOPA said in a statement Friday that the parade was canceled in 2021 and 2022 because of mandated health restrictions imposed by Baltimore Mayor Bandon Scott and the Baltimore Health Department. But the quasi-city agency said COVID-19 was not the reason the parade won’t take place in 2023.

“This year, the decision was made to honor Dr. King with a day of service, in keeping with the spirit of his life and legacy,” the statement said.

Mayor Scott’s office did not return a call seeking comment Friday.

Joshua Harris, vice president of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP, said the city has to host the parade next year. If the city and BOPA need help, Harris said his organization will gladly offer support.

“Not only [does the city] have to make sure that this happens, they have to show that it is something that they value just as any parade celebrations in the city by allowing proper prior planning,” he said. “Two weeks before an event was supposed to happen and say it’s not going to happen will not cut it.”

Harris is not the only leader asking for change.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who represents the 7th Congressional District, which includes neighborhoods that border Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, said the “decision to cancel the parade was disappointing.”

“It is disrespectful to tell entire communities that there won’t be an MLK parade less than two weeks before the celebration of his birthday and equally disrespectful to suggest that he can’t be celebrated through both a day of service and a community parade,” Mfume said. “BOPA is going down the wrong path by making this decision, thereby setting the stage for there never to be an MLK celebration parade again in Baltimore. It’s disgraceful.”

The majority of the city’s elected leaders are Black and benefited from King’s work, said the Rev. Alvin Hathaway Sr., pastor emeritus of Union Baptist Church in West Baltimore and president and CEO of Beloved Community Services Corp., a nonprofit focused on the educational, health and social needs of people.

Therefore, he said, these leaders should be the first in line to honor King.

“[King] wasn’t just an African American leader,” he said. “He was a leader for the world. And for Baltimore not to commemorate that is really an error and a mistake — and it should never happen again.”

He noted that failing to honor King’s legacy or the history of civil rights sends the wrong message.

“He was a proponent of nonviolence,” he said. “We’re experiencing violence in Baltimore, so we should be celebrating a person who was about nonviolence.”