Dangerfield to speak at MLK celebration

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January 16, 2014 - 12:00 AM

D.J. Dangerfield, associate pastor at Chanute’s First Baptist Church, will speak Monday evening during the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. recognition at Ward Chapel A.M.E. Church, 523 N. Buckeye St.
The event will start at 7 o’clock and will have singing, including special numbers by Patricia Pulley, Naomi Clounch and Lloyd Houk, and remarks by the Rev. Joe Bywater, Ward Chapel minister, and Iola Mayor Joel Wicoff.
Theme of the annual event is “Remembering the Past, Living the Present and Planning the Future.”
Dangerfield is a part of the ministerial team at First Baptist, where former Iolan Rick Qualls is lead pastor. His focus is with middle school, high school, college and young adults, a calling he answered about 10 years ago.
He is a 1995 graduate of Humboldt High School, where he was a standout on the basketball court, and was building a career with Sprint when he “had a vision one night” that called him to youth ministry.
He and wife Stephanie have three children.

DR. KING was born Jan. 15, 1929, the son of a minister.
The inequality of segregation was driven home for King when he started school. His best friend was a white boy, who lived in the same neighborhood. However, they could not go to school together. The white friend went to a school for whites only, King to a school for black children.
In professional life as a minister, King was inspired by the work of Henry David Thoreau, particularly his essay, “Civil Disobedience,” which proposed if enough people followed their consciences and disobeyed unjust laws, they could bring about peaceful change.
That was a guiding principle of his life.
President Ronald Reagan signed a federal law on Nov. 2, 1983, making the third Monday of each January Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to recognize King’s effort to eradicate racial discrimination.
The day became official in all 50 states for the first time in 2000.
Dr. King died of an assassin’s bullet at age 39 in Nashville, Tenn., on April 4, 1968.

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