MLK Luncheon on for Monday

This Monday, Jan. 15, marks the birthday of a pivotal pillar in American history — the late and honorable Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As the country preps to commemorate that day, which is also a national holiday, the same goes for members of Sampson County.

To celebrate the memory of Dr. King, the non-profit Multicultural Committee of Sampson County is readying to host the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Luncheon, this year marking the 23rd edition.

The event will be held at 12 p.m. at the Sampson Exposition Center, 414 Warsaw Road, Clinton.

“We feel good about being able to bring it back,” Ted Thomas, committee member, said. “This is our 23rd year putting on the MLK, Jr. Luncheon and even though we are not part of the Chamber of Commerce anymore, we got tremendous community support still.”

One of the event’s trademarks is its ever-popular skits which always represent key moments during civil rights history. That thread continues this year and Thomas gave the insight as to what this year’s theme is.

“We plan on doing a skit this year and, generally when we tell people to come out, they always ask ‘what skit are you doing this year?’” he said with a laugh. “I usually put the skit together and tell them the same thing every time — you got to come to see what it is.”

“Jokes aside, people enjoy the skits, so there will be one and basically the skit is based around the time Martin Luther King was living and during the civil rights movement,” he said. “So that’s what this year’s will be based around — the civil rights movement and Dr. King.”

If that wasn’t enough, the luncheon this time comes with the re-emergence of something that’s been lost since COVID — that being the return of a completely free and open event to the entire public.

”Basically, in the past, before COVID was here, it used to be a free event,” Thomas said. “Back then, you could buy a table but we also had general seating for the public. When COVID hit, we went two years to a completely table-only event to control the crowd. Since we didn’t know exactly how many people would attend, we had to go table-only in 2022 to 2023. We didn’t have it (in person) in 2021 but we were able to do it through Star that year.”

This year, they will be going back to open seating, but they still sold tables, which are already gone.

“This year, we’re going back to open seating,” he said. “The thing about open seating is that we still did tables but we sold out. We had 30 tables to sell that people could buy that wanted to sit together, but again, those tables are basically gone.”

“That said, with open seating returning, we’re putting out approximately 100 chairs,” Thomas said. “With the open seating we try to stay within what Dr. King taught as he was always inclusive. Knowing that, we didn’t want to make it stay completely an event where you had to pay to get in.”

”We wanted the people who didn’t have the opportunities to have a table to still be able to enjoy celebrating his birthday on Monday.”

Naturally as the MLK, Jr. event is a luncheon, Thomas said they will be feeding those that attend, but it won’t be until after the program.

“We will (serve) lunch directly after the event ends; it is a luncheon but we don’t eat during the event,” he said. “We always do the event and we give out the lunch to go once we we finish.

“We used to sit down inside the Expo Center, but people stayed too long, so we said we’d just give it to them to go,” he added with a laugh.