Naomi Girson | staff writer

To celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day the Mount Ararat Baptist Church held the 26th annual Homer S. Brown Drum Major for Justice Awards Breakfast.

The frigid morning ceremony had over 100 in attendance including some of Duquesne’s faculty and the men’s basketball team.

Mayor Ed Gainey, Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato, U.S. Rep. Summer Lee and Lt. Gov. Austin Davis were all in attendance at the morning’s celebration.

Jessyca McCarl, treasurer of Homer S. Brown Division — a subsect of the Allegheny County Bar Association — and part of the planning committee for the event, along with Kellie Ware, said some of the attendees have attended every year since its start in 2000. The ACBA is the annual host of the event, with many of their members attending the ceremony.

The ceremony was intended to honor someone who embodied King’s spirit. This year, Judge Joseph K. Williams III was awarded the Drum Major award, named after an MLK oration he spoke shortly before his death.

King did not want to be known as just a Drum Major, but as a Drum Major for justice, for peace, for righteousness. The annual award carries this title and the responsibility for each recipient to carry as they continue to work toward King’s dream.

Williams was nominated for the award by Nicola Henry-Taylor, judge of Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. She said her reasons included the fact that he was always boldly advocating for others, vocalizing systemic inequalities and bias in the criminal justice system.

As he accepted his award, Williams urged everyone to acknowledge where morality stands in America and where it has strayed from King’s dream.

“I’m here now as a Drum Major of justice to implore each of you to get engaged, shorten that arc between where we are and where Dr. King and vision must be. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, and it’s incumbent upon us to confront the political reality we face in this country today,” Williams said.

Though it was MLK day, it was not the only holiday on the calendar. It was also the inauguration for President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.

Gainey and Lee, both previous recipients of the Drum Major award, alluded to the inauguration before quickly pivoting back to what the day meant to them.

“Where people are scared, in the midst of inauguration, you got a day of hope called ‘King.’ If you worry, if you think that dark times are coming, if you worry about how they call you, what they call you, what they say about you, who they say you are, if you’re worried about it at all, going forward for the next four years, remember, one did it for 20 to 30 years, until he got to the mountaintop to say, ‘I had a dream of a better life,’” Gainey said.

The ceremony was intended to honor someone who embodied King’s spirit, and though they did not hesitate to address political topics, attention was always brought back to King and the honorees at hand.

Along with the Drum Major award, they also chose to honor Mark Lewis and the POISE foundation with their Legacy award, which was last given to the New Pittsburgh Courier in 2020.

The POISE foundation is a Black funded, Black focused and Black run organizations, according to Ware. Their main goals are to support the Black community, philanthropically to create more self-sufficiency and empowerment.

“It’s reserved for a local institution that goes above and beyond and has become an essential part of the fabric of Pittsburgh’s Black community. It’s normally given at a time when the need for their work is heightened, and [Homer S. Brown Division] would like to take that moment to elevate them, to showcase their work and to shower them with support and encouragement for the journey ahead,” Ware said.

Lewis, as president of the organization, said POISE was a response to a lack of support from the government to Black Americans. He reminded the crowd of perhaps a forgotten part of King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.

“Most of us skip over the part where he states, ‘in a sense, we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check.’ He further states, ‘it is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note. In so far as our citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds,’ and unfortunately, every time we seem to make progress, that statement rings true. Today, the Civil Rights Act is and has been gutted, is being gutted. Voting rights, economic rights, there was even talk about who can be a citizen in this country,” Lewis said.

“This is what drum majors look like, bringing people together, the ability to love everybody for who they are, and not just look beyond the superficial, into the bigness of a person, be able to be more understanding with everybody’s culture,” Gainey said.