Some residents of Williamsport and Lycoming County began a week-long celebration and commemoration of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with the annual Peace Walk Saturday.

The walk began at First Church United Methodist on Market Street and concluded with a service paying tribute to King and a former member of Williamsport’s Beloved Community Council, Richard C. James, who died earlier in 2018.

The walk, and the rest of the events throughout the week, will honor the significant Civil Rights Movement leader, who was born on Jan. 25, 1929. King’s work contributed greatly to giving black Americans the same rights afforded to white Americans at the time. He was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis. However, he is honored every January.

The walk began at the church, headed down Market Street, across to Fourth Street, then on to Pine Street and continued on to Third Street and turning back up the church, Mallory Weymer, one of the Peace Walk organizers, said.

“It was a little under a mile and we had the Penn College police escort us and a trolley for people who couldn’t walk or it was too cold for them,” Weymer said.

Following the walk, a service was held in the First Church sanctuary entitled, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” with an emphasis on “Awakening to Social Change” using the social media #getwoke. The celebration service featured a video of King’s life as a bell tolled 39 times.

Raphael Mnkandhla, pastor of City Church on Fourth Street, spoke about standing on the spot where King was shot in 1968. “It broke my heart,” he said.

The pastor said King “was a man who was always fighting for social change.”

Mnkandhla grew up in Zimbabwe, said he saw the cruelty first hand. “I remember watching human beings burned off the streets.”

“I got to know what hatred looked like,” he said. But his faith in a higher power gave him hope. “When I got to know Jesus, that was when I found the anecdote and the cure when humanity could face each other as equals,” he said and siting Genesis 1:26 where God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”

Mnkandhla encouraged event participants to help Williamsport in ways such as mentoring students and children, tutoring people who are unable to speak English.

“Help them flourish,” Mnkandhla said. He cited the late Richard James, who also was a member of the Beloved Community Council, as an example. “He wanted to see everyone flourish.”

He ended his talk with a quote from King: “Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve,” Mnkandhla said. “You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.”

Before Mnkandhla’s talk, dancers from the Lycoming County Dance Group performed, and after his sermon, members of the Christ Community Worship Choir ended the day.

The Peace Walk, celebration service and the week of events honoring King was sponsored and organized by four groups.

Weymer, who serves as director of civic engagement and personal development for Lycoming College, put together the event with Katie Mackey, the director of campus and community engagement for Pennsylvania College of Technology, Britney Tasch, of Step AmeriCorps and Mary Woods, of the Beloved Community Council.

Woods, who was also the program director for the Peace Walk, said that planning for the event began later in 2018.

“We started in October and this is an annual event we have in January,” Woods said. “We wanted to involve as much as the community as possible.”

Woods said it was a “collaborative effort and everyone does their part and that’s what’s so beautiful about it.”

Woods said that Rev. Gwen Bernstine, executive director of the United Churches of Lycoming County and another member of the Beloved Community Council, recommended the First Church be the focal point for the event.

Bernstine said remembering events like this was important.

“I thought it was a wonderful event” and she was pleased to “walk in Dr. King’s honor.”

“Everything matters,” Bernstine said. “What you do matters and all that you do makes a difference.”

For more information about the week of events honoring the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., visit the Beloved Community Council at Facebook.com/mlkdaywilliamsport.