5th Annual Southern Maryland Martin Luther King Jr. Prayer Breakfast Monday, Jan. 19

By admin at 5 January, 2009, 5:31 pm

The Long Road to Realizing King’s Dream:
From Historic St. Mary’s City’s First Black Legislator
To Obama Inauguration

(St. Mary’s City, MD) Jan. 5, 2009 – The fifth annual Southern Maryland Martin Luther King, Jr. Prayer Breakfast will be held on Monday, Jan. 19. As a start to the 375th anniversary year of the founding of Historic St. Mary’s City, the breakfast will highlight the life of America’s first black legislator. On the eve of the inauguration of America’s first African-American president, breakfast attendees will hear about Mathias de Sousa, who in 1641 became a member of the colony’s General Assembly, becoming the first African of mixed descent to hold public office in America. Breakfast service begins at 7:00 a.m. at St. Mary’s College of Maryland (SMCM), with the program scheduled from 8:30-10:30 a.m. The service will feature guest speakers Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), SMCM Professor Garrey Dennie, and Dr. Janice Talbert Walthour. The breakfast is in the college’s Great Room, located on the second floor of the Campus Center. Admission is $7 and includes a full breakfast. The event is sponsored by SMCM and the St. Mary’s County Human Relations Commission. Early arrival is recommended as space is limited, but advanced registration is not required. For more information, contact Judy Carr at (240) 895-4191.

The service will also feature musical performances by the St. Peter Claver Gospel Choir. Masters of ceremony for the event are SMCM Black Student Union President Marian Stukes (’09) and Antonio Miguelez, director of Planning and Operations, Propulsion and Power Department, Naval Air Systems Command. Pastor Henry Briscoe of the House of Disciples International in Lexington Park, Maryland will deliver the invocation.

Last year’s breakfast was attended by more than 325 people, including leaders from the Southern Maryland community who continue to work toward improving race relations, thus fulfilling King’s dream of non-violent social change. This year’s breakfast marks what would have been King’s 80th birthday. Incredibly, non-violent social change occurred early in the settling of Maryland’s first capital, with free citizen Mathias de Sousa’s service in the legislature. De Sousa came to colonial St. Mary’s City as an indentured servant for the Jesuits on the Ark in 1634. He quickly gained his freedom after arriving from England and became a fur trader.

Professor Garrey Dennie, who has taught at SMCM since 1992, is the coordinator and a founding member of the college’s African and African Diaspora Studies Program. He teaches classes in African history, comparative slave systems, the “Caribbean Experience” and “African American History in America.” An activist as well as a scholar and published author on racial injustice, Dennie worked in South Africa as one of Nelson Mandela’s two speech writers after the anti-apartheid leader was freed from prison, crafting some of Mandela’s most memorable speeches.

Dr. Janice Talbert Walthour, a life-long resident of St. Mary’s County, attended segregated George Washington Carver Elementary School as a child and served as its principal in recent years. She retired from the county’s public school system in 2004 after 36 years of service as a teacher, principal and coordinator of academic intervention programs. She is past president of the county’s Unified Committee for Afro-American Contributions and has had a life-long connection to the NAACP, serving on various committees for the past 30 years. Walthour is now working with the education committee for the NAACP’s St. Mary’s County Branch. She was recently appointed to the College of Southern Maryland Board of Trustees and has been selected as one of three 2008 Honorees of the Morgan State University Southern Maryland Alumni Chapter. A poet and motivational speaker, she has read her works and spoken throughout the state.

Congressman Steny H. Hoyer represents Maryland’s Fifth Congressional District. He also serves in the second-highest position in the U.S. House as the Majority Leader, making him the highest-ranking Member of Congress ever to serve the State of Maryland. During his time in Congress, he has been a dedicated champion of the freedoms and rights of individuals in America and throughout the world. In 2002, Hoyer guided the Help America Vote Act to passage, an accomplishment The Washington Post’s David Broder called “the most significant piece of election law since [the] Voting Rights Act.”

Hoyer also shepherded the Americans with Disabilities Act to approval in the House in 1990. This landmark civil rights legislation has helped millions of disabled Americans enter the workforce and achieve independence. As the former chair of the Helsinki Commission, Hoyer championed the cause of human rights, individual freedoms, democracy and religious liberties in the global arena. In 2007, in his first official trip as House Majority Leader, Hoyer led a delegation to the Darfur region of Sudan and has been at the forefront of efforts in Congress in pushing for greater international action to end the genocide in that region.

Locally, Hoyer has worked to expand the opportunities and recognize the achievements of minority citizens living and working in Maryland and the Greater Washington region. One of his signature events—a Black History Breakfast held annually during Black History Month—celebrates the achievements and contributions of African Americans. In 2006, then-Senator Barack Obama attended the breakfast as the honorary guest.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland, designated the Maryland state honors college in 1992, is ranked one of the best liberal arts schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, The Princeton Review, and Kiplinger’s. St. Mary’s College was founded in 1840 as Maryland’s “monument school” commemorating the state’s first capital.

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