After inclement weather led to the cancellation of the highly anticipated and meticulously planned MLK March in January, a two-day community event this month will honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy.
The event, titled “City of San Antonio Community Coming Together: Working Beyond the March,” will take place at Pittman-Sullivan Park on the near East Side on Saturday, Feb. 24, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 25, from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m.
In a press release announcing the event, the MLK Jr. Commission said canceling this year’s march due to extreme cold temperatures and unsafe driving conditions was disappointing, but that the special late February event will honor King’s legacy through community engagement and empowerment.
The march was last canceled in 2021 due to the COVID pandemic, then went virtual in 2022. It hadn’t previously been canceled due to inclement weather, new territory for the commission, said MLK Jr. Commission Chair Dwayne Robinson.
“Typically at the conclusion of the march, at a part of the park, all the community come together where you have the speakers, food vendors, voter registration or health awareness groups,” he said. “We just wanted to make sure we still gave the community an opportunity to participate in that.”
A number of food vendors, local businesses and health agency vendors will share information from their booths at the park during the Beyond the March event, as a main stage highlights entertainment and some speakers originally scheduled to perform in January.
It takes the commission the entire year to plan what it calls the “biggest march in the nation” and its surrounding events, Robinson said, so the community event will also honor the efforts members of the MLK Commission made in the past year.
