MLK Dream Weekend is proud of the accomplishments over the past six years and in this seventh year intends to celebrate many milestones that have helped to shape this effort into what it is today.

·         Over $45,000 in scholarships have been awarded to students including another 11 scholarships totaling an additional $45,000 to be presented at the 2012 Diversity Banquet.

·         Over 6,000 people have been inspired by attending the MLK Dream Weekend Diversity Banquets, giving Greenville the opportunity to host individuals such as Dr. King’s daughter, Dr. Bernice King and Dr. King’s son, Martin Luther King III, Mr. Terrence Roberts of Little Rock Nine, motivational speaker, Les Brown, actress Lynn Whitfield, Coach Herman Boone, the inspiration behind the Disney film Remember the Titans and this year, nationally award winning and multifaceted journalist, Roland Martin.

·         Health awareness education has been provided to hundreds along with our presenting partner, Greenville Hospital System.

·         The local blood supply has been increased through sponsored blood drives working in conjunction with The Blood Connection.

·         Volunteers have been provided opportunities to give back to the communities we serve, an extremely important value Dr. King taught us.

·         Thousands of dollars have been awarded to local dreamers to help them pursue their dreams and inspire others in the process.

·         Hundreds have had the opportunity for personal growth and development through our Day of Dreams workshops that span across topics such as financial planning, keys to achieving your dreams, living a healthy lifestyle and more.

The list of accomplishments goes on, but the biggest success is that we have ignited dreams – an important value that each of us can gravitate to no matter our age, race or gender. We celebrate the realization of those dreams by the millions of people who have advanced their lives and our society through their dreams come true.

Martin Luther King Dream Weekend offers us a time to celebrate how far we have come, how much we have achieved and how promising the future is for ourselves and for our children. This is also a time to challenge ourselves. We challenge the barriers and the lack of passion and drive that has prevented many of us from realizing our dream.

Dr. King’s dream was meant to inspire, to instill in people of all races and creeds a belief that if something is good, is right, and is beneficial, it can be accomplished. And though it’s true that accomplishments and achievements are individual acts, they are also community acts. In order to achieve meaningful progress we need each other, we need community spirit, community support and community prayer. How fortunate we are that the community of Greenville has stepped up in its efforts to expand the possibilities and potential for people of all races!

Together, we can build on the accomplishments of those around us.  Together we can lead change in the Upstate, change in our creativity and our innovations, change in our culture and our mindset and change in our behaviors.

In 2012 let’s invite more dreams – big dreams and little dreams, individual dreams and communal dreams.  In 2012 let’s encourage reverence for the mission of Dr. King by achieving great things, making a positive difference, to change our lives, our communities, our nation and our world for the better.

We all don’t need to attempt the impossible to make our mark. We just need to each become engaged and care about out how our lives impact others. Our commitment to take action on our dreams is where we must each begin.  Thanks to Dr. King, the odds are no longer impossible. And the potential is infinite.

For a full listing of MLK Dream Weekend 2012 events, visit www.mlkdreamweekend.com.

Dr. King’s most influential and powerful quotes are engraved on the Inscription Wall at the MLK Memorial. Studying the quotes, it is clear that he linked the struggle for civil rights and racial equality to international human rights through messages such as, “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.” Dr. King lifted the issues of racial and economic injustice to the global level, to include the poor of Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America.

King’s message of peace, equality and democracy brought him world prominence as a champion of human rights and social justice. As one of the world’s most celebrated nonviolent activists, King’s global influence is immortalized in statues and street names around the world. Over 100 countries from Canada to Japan celebrate his birthday. Britain honored Martin Luther King as a 20th century martyr with a statue in Westminster Abbey in London, the only American to be given a prominent memorial in such an “ancient niche.”

As we prepare for Greenville’s celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday during MLK Dream Weekend, Jan. 13-16, our view of Dr. King must be expanded to include how he is the global symbol of the struggle for nonviolent social change. His voyage to West Africa in 1957 to attend Ghana’s independence ceremony, the first Saharan colonial African country to gain independence, marked the beginning of a growing global alliance of oppressed peoples with King as the inspiration.

King actively supported the struggle of South Africans against apartheid. Dr. King and Chief Luthuli, president of the African National Congress and the leader of black Africans in their nonviolent campaign for civil rights in South Africa, made an “Appeal for Action against Apartheid” on Human Rights Day in December 1962. Years later, as Nelson Mandela celebrated his election as the first black president of South Africa, he quoted King, the “Great Freedom Fighter,” saying, “Free at last.”

In 1964, the chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee called King, the youngest person awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an “undaunted champion of peace” as he was the first person in the Western world to have shown that a struggle can be waged without violence. “Dr. King was the first to make the message of brotherly love a reality in the course of his struggle, and he has brought this message to people of all nations and races.”

King inspired the civil rights struggle of Aboriginal Australia. “Freedom Rides” were organized in 1965 throughout New South Wales, a state of Australia, to expose the discrimination experienced by Aboriginal people.

Recently, Martin Luther King’s global reach was reflected in the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. Three women from Africa and the Arab world shared the prize for their nonviolent role in promoting peace, democracy and gender equality. One recipient, Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, a pro-democracy campaigner, called the prize “the victory of our peaceful revolution.” Martin Luther King most inspired Ms. Karman with his quest for peaceful change. She said, “We try for change using his same methods.”

King argued that “we cannot ignore the larger ‘World House’ in which we are also dwellers” in his last book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” He tells a parable of a divided and long-separated family who inherited a mansion, which they cannot sell. They must instead live together peacefully in the house, putting aside their differences.

Using this parable to point to a new problem of mankind, King says, “We have inherited a large house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together — black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu — a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace. The large house in which we live demands that we transform this worldwide neighborhood into a worldwide brotherhood.”

Today, Dr. King’s message is more important than ever before. In “Where Do We Go From Here,” King noted that oppressed people cannot remain so forever as “eventually the cup of endurance runs over,” prophesying events in Egypt and the Middle East. King’s visionary work is his greatest memorial.

Join us as we celebrate Martin Luther King’s leadership which still resonates all over the world at the MLK Dream Weekend Diversity Banquet on Friday, Jan. 12, 2012. Tickets are on sale now at several locations in Greenville and online at mlkdreamweekend.com.

For more than a decade, the men and women of The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Foundation, Inc. have worked tirelessly at campaigning and fundraising in Washington, D.C. to bring this project to fruition.

To activate the residents of Greenville County in support of this exciting occasion, MLK Dream Weekend and the Dream Builders Group, a capstone project of the Diversity Leaders Initiative at the Riley Institute, have joined together to create Dream Builders Project.

This is a memorial to remind each of us of The Dream.  It will preserve for us and future generations the life and legacy, the lessons and sacrifices that Dr. King left for us to follow.

This is a memorial for all dreamers. Dr. King’s message of democracy, justice, hope and love is something that every American can and should embrace.  While remembering his dream, we should also be inspired to follow the dream inside our own hearts.

For more information on how you can join the celebration, please visit www.dreambuildersproject.com.

We are very thankful to all of our steering committee, our sponsors, our partners, our supporters, and our friends for your significant roles in making MLK Dream Weekend an important part of the culture of Greenville, SC.

Our hope and prayer is that the residents of our community will continue to be inspired to dream and to act on those dreams because we believe that “Dreams in Action change our future, change our culture, and change our community.

Thank you for your support!

See you January 13-16, 2012!

By 2005, Martin Luther King, Jr. had long been my hero. I revere Martin Luther King, Jr. for his non-violence, his vision of a world without racial prejudice, his focus on eliminating poverty, his views on leadership and education, and much more.

As Dr. King stated in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Sweden in 1964, “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon… which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.” I signed a covenant of non-violence many years ago, which I consider the first transformation that Martin Luther King, Jr. brought to my own life.

King believed, “All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” His view of the interrelatedness of human existence is true today more than ever. This “web of mutuality” creates energy for service to others. It is the source of my passion for prosperity for all through education.

I learned about servant leadership from Martin Luther King, Jr.  King insisted “Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verbs agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.”

It has been nearly 43 years since Dr. King left us. Looking back, it is hard to imagine our community without the changes brought by Martin Luther King, Jr. Did we actually live in a place with discriminatory voting practices, where buses were segregated, where restaurants refused to serve African Americans, where schools, swimming pools, theaters, churches, and libraries were segregated?

A  holiday to celebrate MLK’s legacy should have great significance, however, as time passes, there are many in our community who do not know about or no longer remember or celebrate MLK’s legacy.

January 17, 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of the Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday. This milestone is a perfect opportunity for Greenville to recommit to honoring Dr. King’s legacy by attending the Martin Luther King Diversity Banquet on Friday, January 14, 2011, at the Carolina First Center.

The MLK Diversity Banquet is part of MLK Dream Weekend, a series of events, organized by Pastor Curtis Johnson of Valley Brook Outreach Baptist Church and Dr. Phillip Baldwin of Bethlehem Baptist Church. This community-wide celebration is dedicated to igniting the spirit of inclusiveness in the community and reenergizing discussions about King’s message of hope, healing, and service.

Just as Reverend King wanted the base of his movement to be as broad as possible, broad-based participation in the MLK Diversity Weekend has always been the goal. As a cross-section of the community helped bring the MLK holiday to Greenville, a cross-section should participate in commemorating Martin Luther King’s life and legacy. This has never been an African American only event.

The MLK Dream Weekend planning committee wants to increase the number of young people, international citizens, and ethnic and faith groups who attend the diversity banquet. The speaker for the banquet, Coach Herman Boone, epitomizes King’s “network of mutuality,” as he was able to build trusting relationships in the first season of a racially integrated football team.

Coach Boone was the subject of the Disney movie, Remember the Titans, starring Denzel Washington. Based on actual events in 1971 in Virginia in which a black and white high school were closed and students were sent to T.C. Williams High School under federal mandate to integrate, Remember the Titans presents the year as seen through the eyes of the football team as they become the unifying symbol for the school and community.

Most importantly, participation in MLK Dream Weekend events develops ongoing, long-term relationships that will benefit the community, extending well beyond an annual celebration.

Beginning with this community wide celebration, let this be the year that all of us in Greenville rededicate ourselves to keeping Martin Luther King’s dream alive!

Tickets for the Diversity Banquet can be purchased at Bethlehem Baptist Church, BJ’s Music, Greenville County Human Relations Commission, and Valley Brook Outreach Baptist Church. For information on events and to purchase tickets through PayPal, go to www.mlkdreamweekend.com. Tickets are $60 each or $550 for a table of 10.

July 16 marked the 50th anniversary of the “Greenville 8” who challenged the Greenville County Library System’s segregation policies and set in motion a chain of events that resulted in a fully integrated Greenville Public Library a few months later.  The eight African-American students who were part of the peaceful sit-in were arrested and then released after less than an hour in jail.

Actions like that certainly require an inner conviction that your dream can affect real change in your own community.  That’s the kind of conviction that made these eight young students believe that they could take on a challenge as big and ugly as racism and discrimination right where they lived.

Our Dreamer’s Community and our Facebook and Twitter pages are designed as tools to help you connect with others who share the same dream.  Together we can accomplish more.  Take the time to share your dream and the challenges you face, so that others can come alongside you to help, support and encourage you.  By sharing, you might find yourself part of a group that can look back 50 years later and know the difference you made.

All. Together. Now

To begin taking action on your dreams, we’re encouraging you to put them in writing.  As a statement of inspiration, purpose and hope, we’ve written our own Dreamers’ Constitution, a declaration built on the ideas and powerful language that our nation’s Founding Fathers used when they wrote the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States.  A new part of our website will feature the opportunity for each of you to write your own Dreamers’ Constitution.  Make a contract with yourself to pursue your dreams, take action on them and change the future.

Another important part of this year’s marketing campaign is a new Facebook Fan Page that allows greater interaction for our fans.  The fan page includes several new custom pages that will tell you more about scholarship opportunities, the Dreamers’ Constitution, and the many events that we have planned for this year.  We will be sharing messages of inspiration and challenging our fans to pursue their dreams.  Throughout the coming months we’ll share photos, videos and links we think will inspire or help you as you take action on your dreams.  We welcome your inspirations and challenges, successes, feedback and questions on this fan page.  It as a resource for building connections, sharing your dreams and connecting with others.

With the launch of the new Facebook fan page, we ask that you spread the word and share the new page with all of your friends!  The power of collaboration will grow as the number of fans grows.  Each of you has the opportunity to bring your friends to this resource as well and help them see the possibility of their dreams.

We are excited and hopeful as we work towards the 2011 MLK Dream Weekend on January 14-17, 2011.  Thank you for the support, encouragement and inspiration you provide to us.

All. Together. Now.

When we think of church ministries, local organizations and support groups, we think of Men, Women, Children, married couples, singles and the elderly. But we tend to forget about a very important group of people that make up 65% of the residents in Greenville County. That special group of people are our single mothers. A single mother of 8 years, I was compelled to not only share my testimony but write my testimony of my experience as a single mother. In 2006 I wrote and released my first published book, Single Mothers Dispelling the Facts. From this book, was birthed my dream, Mom&Me Ministries. Mom&Me Ministries is a Christian based support group for single mothers in the Greenville and surrounding counties. Every Mother’s Day weekend, Mom&Me Ministries host an annual empowerment luncheon for single mothers. The luncheon consists of empowering them through local resources, other single mothers testimonies, an motivational speaker and we present each mother with a gift. Throughout the year, I do one on one counseling session and mentoring to our single mothers and I host a monthly fellowship where the single mothers come together to minister to each other through the word of God and their life experiences that they deal with on a daily basis. Since 2006, I also have establish and building a relationship with the single mothers of Oakland Place Apartments which is a low income housing community in our county that consists of 90% single mothers. Even though I am very blessed and honored that God chose me for the dream, the time has come to expand the dream to where I can provide a facility for mothers for job training, counseling, economical assistance and to further their education. It is my dream for Mom&Me Ministries that we could have a facility in Greenville County to provide services to our single mothers and begin to focus on the children as well as the mothers. Mom&Me Ministries is not a ministry that promotes or encourage someone to become a single mother. But just like every other organization and support group, one is needed for our single mothers. We can not change who they are, but we can make sure that the lives of our single mothers and their children are just as important and nurtured as our married couples, our singles and our elderly. Mom&Me is to support and not to judge and condemn. We believe and our mission comes from Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 “Two people can accomplish more than twice as much as one ; they get a better return for their labor. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But people who are alone when they fall are in real trouble.” In addition to what we have established and doing for single mothers, Mom&Me Ministries is currently looking into resources and ways to make the ministry a nonprofit to be able to obtain sponsors and grants for the future Mom&Me Ministries Empowerment Facility.