In 2024, January 20th saw a huge snowfall in Kingsport and upper East Tennessee. A year later in 2025, the weather forecast in Kingsport for January 20th was just as foreboding. The high temperature of 24 degrees for the day had already been reached the night before, with the temperatures into the teens around 10 and 11 AM. For the second straight year in a row, cold weather would force a postponement of the annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day observances, the King Day march, candlelight vigil and luncheon in Kingsport.
The dates for the rescheduled events have now arrived. The MLK Candlelight Vigil will be held on Friday, April 4, 2025, and both the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Parade and the Annual MLK Luncheon are scheduled for Saturday, April 5, 2025.
The annual New Vision Youth MLK Candlelight Vigil will be observed on Friday night at 6:30 PM at the Shiloh Baptist Church, 712 East Sevier Avenue in Kingsport. This year's theme is "Light into Unity and Peace." "We honor special groups and individuals in the community that exemplify the love and understanding that Dr. King taught us as a society," says vigil and luncheon organizer Johnnie Mae Swagerty. Candles will be lit to commemorate those community members who have passed on and the survivors who have picked up the banner and are marching proudly with it. Those groups include first responders, Kingsport city government administrators, community groups, leaders and businesses.
A special note of the Candlelight Vigil will be the overlapping of the moment at 7:01 PM Eastern Daylight time, that Dr. King was felled by an assassin's bullet on April 4th, 1968. A moment of silence will be observed at that time.
On Saturday, April 5, 2025, the 25th Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Parade will be at 12 Noon on Saturday, April 5th in Kingsport. Parade participants are asked to assemble at the corner of East Sullivan Street and East Center Street (where the McAninch Apartments used to be). This year's theme is "the answer to racism is the Love of Christ" and "Love is still alive in 2025; choose to love and not hate." The warmer weather forecast for Saturday may be the incentive that greets marchers this year. "It will be a time of us all walking together for a common good," says parade organizer Bishop Ronnie Wayne Collins. "The current discourse in this country, the price of groceries, the loss of jobs and the shuttering of federal offices and programs that help the people is one of the motivating factors to hopefully increasing our turnout this year."
Once again, the parade route will be on Sullivan Street, from the Center Street intersection up to City Hall at the Church Circle. "For safety reasons, we moved from Center Street," Bishop Collins says. "Center Street is so wide that only one side of the street can be shut down at one time. Having the parade on Sullivan Street allows for police to shut down the entire road and it's much easier to block off intersections. That makes it much safer for the parade participants."
The Sullivan Street route also crosses through an historic intersection. At the corner of Sullivan Street, Cherokee Street and East Charlemont Avenue, the parade will pass through the location of the first parade held in Dr. King's memory on Sunday afternoon April 7, 1968, three days after he was gunned down in Memphis. The first parade came through that intersection, where hundreds of people came to pay their respects to Dr. King's memory and his legacy.
The invitation goes out to everyone who participated in the 1968 Kingsport Memorial March for Dr. King to come out 57 years later and relive the emotions that were driving the spirit of the marchers on that Sunday, thought to be one of the first marches in Tennessee for the slain civil rights leader. "It will be a time for all of us from two or three generations if we're able, to walk together for the continuing common good," Bishop Collins says. "The love back then, is just as strong as the love now."
Parade sponsors are the Tennessee/Virginia Fellowship Against Racism and the East Tennessee District Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship.
The annual New Vision Youth Community Unity Luncheon will be held at 12:45 PM in the Riverview Community Room at the V.O. Dobbins Community Center Complex on Wheatley Street, next to the pickleball courts. The event is free to the public, "everybody's invited until the food is gone," Swagerty says.
This year's lunch is catered by Krazy Chicken International in Kingsport, and features chicken tenders, coleslaw and french fries, along with traditional down home soup beans with ham hocks, homemade cornbread and iced tea. The lunch is sponsored by the New Vision Youth, the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce, the Sons and Daughters of Douglass Alumni Association, KHRA and South Central Kingsport Community Development, Inc.
