Supreme Court Chief Justice Harold Melton featured speaker at King Day Celebration

ALBANY — Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Harold Melton will be the featured speaker at the annual Albany King Day Celebration. The event honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 18 on the West Campus of Albany State University.

The theme of this year’s celebration is “We Are All One Humanity.”

“We’ve had governors, congressmen and high-ranking judges speak at our annual celebration,” King Day Celebration Committee Chairman Ken Hodges, who recently began his term as an elected judge on the state Court of Appeals, said. “I’ll never forget sitting at the head table with (former Georgia Governor) Roy Barnes and all the 1,000 or so seats on the (Albany) Civic Center floor were filled and people were sitting up in the seats surrounding the floor.

“Gov. Barnes leaned over and whispered to me, ‘Ken, this is better than Atlanta.’”

Those days of overwhelming support, though, have diminished in recent years as Albany and southwest Georgia have been hit by a series of natural disasters.

“With a lot of philanthropic events, there comes a time when people question whether it’s run its course,” Hodges said. “But I think — and the committee members feel — that Dr. King’s message must continue to be told. We don’t have the kind of support for our King Day event that we once had, but then you have to look at all the natural disasters our community has been through the last several years.

“We’re having this year’s event (several days after the actual Jan. 21 King Day holiday) because our community remains in recovery mode.”

Hodges said one of the highlights of the King Day Celebration is the naming of Dream Award recipients. And he brushed off complaints that these awards are typically given to “some of the same people that are always being recognized, the ones that have money or get their names in the paper all the time.”

“I believe getting one of these awards is truly an honor,” the Court of Appeals judge said. “And the people who receive them are certainly deserving.”

Hodges, who, incidentally, has never been a Dream Award recipient despite chairing the celebration committee for “somewhere between 10 and 15 years,” takes out his cellphone and emails a reporter the list of recipients of Dream Awards dating back to the start of the celebration in 1996.

“Now look at this,” he says, pointing to a number of people on the list. “Do you know who this is? Or this person? Or this one?”

When a reporter admits that he does not, Hodges continues to go down the list, calling out names of “people I frankly don’t know” and others that he said are “absolutely deserving of recognition.”

Melton, who was appointed to the state Supreme Court by then-Gov. Sonny Perdue on July 1, 2005, received his bachelor’s degree from Auburn University and his juris doctor degree from the University of Georgia. Before being named to the state high court, he served as executive council to Perdue.

Individual tickets and tables as well as sponsorship opportunities are available for the Feb. 18 event. For information on those matters or anything else to do with the King Day Celebration, call the Albany Civil Rights Institute at (229) 432-1698.

“We need to remember the work of men like Dr. King,” Hodges said. “I didn’t grow up in the ’60s, and most of what I know about that era I learned from history books. It’s important for the coming generations to learn about this vital part of our nation’s history.

“If we ignore the things like racism that persist in our country, if we ignore the part of our history that brought us to this point, it’s very possible that we could repeat them.”

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