Florida's Capital City marked Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Day with a march, a festival and a community forum on Monday, January 16.
The impending inauguration of Donald Trump seemed to add more urgency than usual to the occasion. This year's MLK Day Parade was the last Dale Landry would preside over as Tallahassee Chapter NAACP president.
"Eight years we've been doing this," he said a bit wistfully as hundreds of people completed the march from Tallahassee's CK Steele Bus Plaza to Cascades Park. "I'm really pleased and happy to have had the opportunity to do it and lucky to have the pleasure to do the last one because now I can get diligently into the work."
For new Sheriff Walt McNeil, that "work" included building better relations between law officers and the minority community.
"What (Tallahassee Police) Chief DeLeo and I will do is continue to call diverse leadership when problems occur," he said. "We'll call them before they occur. We build relationships before there's a problem."
But Tallahassee City Commissioner Curtis Richardson sees more potential problems as a new administration takes over in Washington.
"Although we've made a lot of progress, if we aren't careful, we'll see ourselves sliding back to conditions the way they were during Dr. King's time," he cautioned.
Monday's celebration concluded with the yearly Day of Dialogue community discussion about race and diversity.
