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MLK parade in Tampa provides a forum for many messages

 
(From left) Keon Delu, 9, Taniyah Mason, 13, and Kiauntae  Cruz 12, ask for beads from parade floats passing by on during the 28th Annual City of Tampa Martin Luther King Day Parade in Tampa on Monday, January 16, 2017.
(From left) Keon Delu, 9, Taniyah Mason, 13, and Kiauntae Cruz 12, ask for beads from parade floats passing by on during the 28th Annual City of Tampa Martin Luther King Day Parade in Tampa on Monday, January 16, 2017.
Published Jan. 17, 2017

TAMPA — For Billi Griffin, the day to celebrate a civil rights leader is personal.

The 80-year-old Tampa resident remembers being called racial slurs growing up and, later, while working in Washington, D.C. In the 1960s, she marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma and in Washington, D.C., standing near the reflecting pool as he delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech.

On Monday, Griffin slipped some oversized gold and green beads around her neck and climbed on to the Tampa Housing Authority's parade float, one of about 120 entries in the annual King parade that rolled north from Cuscaden Park in the V.M. Ybor neighborhood. Hundreds of spectators lined the parade route along 15th Street to take in the marching bands and dancing troupes. Children's necks disappeared behind piles of beads but they still clamored for more of the plastic baubles and candy.

Adults and children alike screamed when retired Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker Derrick Brooks rolled by, tossing beads from the back of a white Audi convertible. Brooks served as co-grand marshal with Florida Sentinel Bulletin editor Gwen Hayes.

The parade came just days before the transition of power from the first black president, Barack Obama, to Donald Trump, who garnered little support from African-Americans. It's a transition King, who would have turned 88 on Sunday, might still be alive to see if he hadn't been assassinated in Memphis in 1968.

Brooks said he's confident Dr. King's message wouldn't have changed.

"He always promoted unity and equal justice for all, and I think he would have the same message for any president to continue that same fabric," he said. "For the people, it's the same message. We've got to continue to love each other and take care of each other and, despite our differences, we've got to find a common thread. We're all human beings and have to treat others the way we want to be treated."

At least two parade entrants used the event to spread their own message in a city wracked by regular spasms of gun violence.

A group called 813 Stop the Violence plastered a trailer with the photos of four-dozen people fatally shot in the Tampa area. One of them was Nico Crawford, who died when two men opened fire into a crowd gathered at Al Barnes Park on Easter Sunday in 2014.

Crawford's mother, Kenya Robinson, walked alongside the trailer carrying a sign: "All life matters. We can, we shall, we will stop the violence."

"We felt if we get out and speak to these kids, they might put the guns down," Robinson said. "It's just too many lives being lost due to gun violence."

Griffin said frustrated Americans would do well to heed a King quote emblazoned on a banner on the side of the housing authority's float: "We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish as fools."

"If he were alive today, he would say we have an obligation to each other to do the best we can with what we have, and we have a new president coming in and whether we like it or we don't like, he is our 45th president, and as such we need to give him the respect deserving of the office," she said. "In this climate, we need to love one another, we need to respect one another. A lot of the things happening in our communities are happening because we're not loving one another. He would say work with the current administration and make changes where you can."

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She said she's glad to be able to relay her own experience to her children and grandchildren, as a lesson in how far America has come despite the current political climate.

"This too shall change," she said. "Dr. King's dream will live on. You can't kill a dream. It lives in the heart of the people."

Contact Tony Marrero at tmarrero@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3374. Follow @tmarrerotimes.