RED BANK: KING CELEBRATION GROWS

Rabbi Douglas Sagal, at right, leading a portion of the celebration. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)

By BRIAN DONOHUE

Pilgrim Baptist Church of Red Bank’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration has long been an event that makes your heart swell – with pride in community, and with conviction to carry out King’s legacy in whatever ways we can.  

This year, the event itself got a whole lot bigger.

Dancers from the Monmouth County Boys and Girls club perform, above, and the Red Bank Regional High School Choir and Long Branch High School Civic Leadership Corps, below. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)

Held in previous years at the congregation’s Shrewsbury Avenue home, the annual celebration moved to the Vogel at the Count Basie Center for the Arts Monday for a day of music, dance and reflection.

Gazing at the packed house from the stage, Pastor Terrence Porter said the church may need to book the adjacent – and much larger – Hackensack Meridian Theater next year.

“We’ve outgrown this place as well,” he said, referring to the 750-capacity Vogel. “That’s what community does. It grows together.”

The event featured performances by the Red Bank Regional High School choir, Red Bank Middle School singer Kyla Puryear, and dancers from the Monmouth County Boys and Girls Club.

In his commemorative message, Rabbi Douglas Sagal of Congregation B’nai Israel in Rumson recounted a story of how King asked a group of rabbis attending a conference in Atlantic City in 1964 to come to St. Augustine, Florida after the civil rights leader had been jailed there.

The rabbis travelled to Florida to join civil rights protests, where 17 of them were arrested for acts of civil disobedience.

“Dr. King’s plea to those rabbis is as true today as it was 60 years ago,” Sagal told the crowd. “It is our responsibility to bear prophetic witness to the evils of our time.”

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