Abbeville celebrates MLK Day with parade

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously had a dream that defined his legacy.
At the annual Stump Service, held each year in Abbeville on the day that honors him, the guest speaker asked those in attendance if they have followed the lead Dr. King set decades ago.
“Do you have a dream?” Dr. Daylon Taylor asked.
Taylor, an Abbeville native living in New Orleans, traveled Monday to speak during his hometown’s MLK Day celebration.
“All of us have a dream about something,” Taylor said. “Little kids dream about stuff. Older people dream about stuff.”
Dreams can be great, Taylor stressed, if they are for the right reasons.
“If you have a dream today,” he said, “and it is only a dream about yourself, and not about helping other people, then that is not a good dream to have. When Dr. King said he had a dream, he wasn’t talking about just for himself.
“His dream was that everybody else would prosper.”
Taylor asked those in attendance, if their dream is just, how far they are willing to go for that dream.
“The dream that (Dr. King) had cost him his life,” Taylor said. “When you really, really love something, you are willing to die for it.
“You should be willing to step out, no matter what is coming your way.”
The Stump Service has served as key portion of the MLK Day celebration in Abbeville for the last decade.
“It starts our Martin Luther King Day celebration,” Elbert Dawson of Herod Village said. “Thank God that we are here for it.”
The Monday celebration also included a parade that went from A.A. Comeaux Park down Martin Luther King Drive to Herod Village, were events continued throughout the day.
The theme for the entire celebration was “The Color of Unity — A Community of Unity.”
“Dr. King preached unity,” Dawson said. “Walking hand in hand with each other and being on one accord.
“We need to carry on that legacy because it is so important for the community to be unified.”