Martin Luther King Jr. remembered at annual MLK Day breakfast

Central Ohio leaders spoke today about what seemed to be on the minds of many at the the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Breakfast: the upcoming inauguration of President-Elect Donald Trump.

Almost every speaker at the Greater Columbus Convention Center referred to Trump, but only keynote speaker and former Mayor Michael B. Coleman mentioned him by name.

"We have lived through Jim Crow, we can live through Donald Trump," he said to cheers and applause.

The audience and speakers at the 32nd annual breakfast focused on the past and present struggles of African-Americans and other minorities and urged people to keep the movement King started going.

"Our mission is to create a force for good," Coleman said. "That's what makes America great again, serving our community to do good.

"Dr. King would say, 'Don't be afraid, don't accept the fear as the new normal,'" Coleman said. "Fear begets hate."

Betty Chukes Sewar, a South Side resident, has been to every one of the 32 breakfasts. A retired home healthcare worker, she said this year's was the first that became political. The event is billed as nonpartisan and nondenominational.

She said she thinks it's because the "incoming president has got a lot of strange ideas and strange ways. It's really hard to adjust."

Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman also spoke, mostly about fighting heroin addiction in the state, but also of King's legacy.

King "changed hearts. And when hearts change, laws tend to change, too," Portman said. "Each of us has a role to play in continuing to fight for that justice."

Ohio State University President Michael V. Drake expressed satisfaction at the number young people among the 3,000 or so people present for the breakfast.

"The world we face today bears resemblance to the world Dr. King did work in," he said. "We're grappling for struggles with liberation and acceptance for all."

U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, a Columbus Democrat, was the first to turn things toward the political. Her presentation got a standing ovation for her comments about President Barack Obama.

"President Obama gave us the audacity of hope and, in Martin Luther King Jr.'s words, the audacity to believe," Beatty said. "We gathered here today because it is about a historical moment, but, my friends, it is also about a new journey."

This article first appeared on the Columbus Dispatch's website on January 16, 2017.