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The Martin Luther King Support Group of Southeast Texas achieved a noteworthy accomplishment on this year’s MLK Day holiday by putting on the 30^th MLK Day Brunch at the R.A. “Bob” Bowers Civic Center in Port Arthur. Hargie Faye Savoy and other members of the organization have put Port Arthur on the map as the premier MLK celebration in Southeast Texas and continue to keep the dream alive for new generations.

Some of those who attended the MLK Brunch as children in the early days are now bringing their own children to the event so they, too, will appreciate the history and join with their community to honor the memory of Dr. King. The many thousands of people from all walks of life who have attended the brunch over the years have learned together the motto “Remember, celebrate, act.”

It takes many hands to put on an event of the size and scope of the annual MLK Brunch and many accolades were given to those who helped make the 30^th event a huge success. But one name stands alone as the heart and soul of the event, and that would be the founder of the brunch, the woman lovingly known by so many as Hargie Faye. The story has been retold many times but it is worth repeating that the MLK Brunch was born of a request to Ms. Savoy from Coretta Scott King, the widow of Dr. King, to help her keep Dr. King’s dream, and the holiday, alive. Mrs. King was visiting Port Arthur as the speaker for a Sesquicentennial event in 1986 when she made the request.

Ms. Savoy fulfilled that request and has done so many times over. The guest speakers and workshops have shared Dr. King’s six principles of nonviolence and his six steps for nonviolent social change. Seminars have focused on the triple evils of poverty, racism and militarism that the King Philosophy says stand as barriers to our living the “Beloved Community,” to which Dr. King aspired. Dr. King’s memory is alive in Port Arthur and the struggle to make all men and women equal in the eyes of the law is carried on in large part because of that commitment made 30 years ago by Hargie Faye Savoy to help keep The Dream alive.