MLK Jr. Unity Breakfast in Birmingham: A Time for Reflection and Celebration

MLK Jr. Unity Breakfast at the Sheraton in downtown Birmingham featured a time of reflection and celebration. (Marika N. Johnson, For The Birmingham Times)

By Sym Posey | The Birmingham Times

On Monday, Birmingham held its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Breakfast at the downtown Sheraton with hundreds of state, local, civic and neighborhoods leaders, as well students and area residents, in reflection and celebration.

Birmingham ’s Community Affairs Committee (CAC) hosted the 39th Unity Breakfast which featured keynote speaker Margaret Norman, Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Birmingham Jewish Federation (BJF); and 2025 MLK Essay Competition winners Morgan Hughley and McKensie Fenil, of Fairfield Preparatory High School.

“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s impact on Generation Z is profound and multifaceted,” said Hughley, reading her first place winning essay. “His teachings provide a moral compass and strategic framework for a generation committed to building a more equitable and inclusive world.

Morgan Hughley, of Fairfield Preparatory High School, reads from her first-place essay.(Marika N. Johnson, For The Birmingham Times)

“Through social media, education, and a commitment to intersectional activism, Generation Z not only honors King’s legacy but also carries it forward, proving that his dream of justice and equality remains alive and relevant in the 21st century,” read Hughley.

Norman said she wondered whether she was the right pick for keynote speaker. “I thought, is taking the stand as a leader in the Jewish community on a day about Dr. King appropriate or right … today is about unity.”

Before joining the BJF, Norman served as the Director of Programming at Temple Beth El, where she helped launch the Beth El Civil Rights Experience; a public history project exploring Birmingham’s Jewish and Civil Rights histories.

Keynote speaker, Margaret Norman, Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Birmingham Jewish Federation. (Marika N. Johnson, For The Birmingham Times)

During her address, she also quoted from Dr. King’s famous “Letter From Birmingham”: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

As the only federal holiday that honors an African American, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was first celebrated on January 20, 1986. That date also serves as the anniversary for the first MLK Unity Breakfast.

During Birmingham’s Monday celebration State Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove, said, “Today we reflect on not only how far we’ve come, but on the journey that still lies ahead. A journey we must continue with courage, unity, and unwavering determination.”

And State Rep. Juandalynn Givan, D-Birmingham, last year’s keynote speaker, said, “We are assembled here at the Sheraton Hotel, Black people, white people, old and young, Catholic, Baptist, Protestants, and Jewish to celebrate a man that simply stood in Washington to declare that [he] had a dream … a dream of hope, a dream of peace, and dream for equality.”

Members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. join hands to sing We Shall Overcome during MLK Jr. Unity Breakfast at the Sheraton in downtown Birmingham. (Marika N. Johnson, For The Birmingham Times)