By Dawn Burleigh

The Orange Leader

Overcoming Barriers through Building Strong Families is the theme for 2017 Martin Luther King Jr. Day March in Orange.

The Orange Branch NAACP MLK Day March is at 1 p.m. (line up start at 12:30 p.m.) on Monday, Jan. 16, at the corner of 2nd and Turrett “Solomon Johnson Park” and ending at Orange City Hall.
Shuttle service will be provided for those parking at city hall and taken to Solomon Johnson Park.

“Our focus is to build strong families for a strong future,” NAACP President Pastor Demetrius Moffett said. “This is also the theme for the NAACP this year.”

While many think of the NAACP as a civil rights group, Moffett refers to the organization as an equal rights group.

According to the NAACP official website, it reads: ‘The mission of the NAACP is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.’

“That is how we came up with the theme Overcoming Barriers,” Moffett said. “There are barriers in Orange to overcome to become a prosperous city.”

Moffett also said poverty does not know race or gender nor do those in need of CPS services.

“Orange NAACP, this year, will be geared towards building strong families and addressing concerns across the board,” Moffett said.
Outgoing NAACP President Franklin Gans will speak at Orange City Hall followed by Incoming President Demetrius Moffett.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the 11-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over 2,500 times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles, according to a biography on him at nobelprizes.org

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

The objectives of the NAACP are found on the first page of the NAACP Constitution – the principal objectives of the Association shall be:

• To ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of all citizens
• To achieve equality of rights and eliminate race prejudice among the citizens of the United States
• To remove all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes
• To seek enactment and enforcement of federal, state, and local laws securing civil rights
• To inform the public of the adverse effects of racial discrimination and to seek its elimination
• To educate persons as to their constitutional rights and to take all lawful action to secure the exercise thereof, and to take any other lawful action in furtherance of these objectives, consistent with the NAACP’s Articles of Incorporation and this Constitution, according to http://www.naacp.org/