‘A Little Better Than Yesterday’: Hundreds Attend Interfaith MLK Service in New Canaan

A native of Memphis, the city where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, George Walker Jr. has felt a lifelong connection to the civil rights leader. 

An ordained minister himself, Walker attended King’s alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta, pledging the same fraternity, then launched a career that’s included positions on the U.S. president’s Board of Advisors for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, a member of the American Leadership Council for Diversity in Healthcare and as vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. This past weekend, Walker recalled Monday while addressing a packed United Methodist Church as the guest speaker during New Canaan’s annual celebration of King’s life, a King quote that he had “decided to stick with love” because “hate is too great a burden to bear” came to Walker’s mind. Following a workout and lunch in Manhattan, Walker said, he and his husband were riding a subway back uptown when he spotted an “older black woman who caught my eye.”

“She had several ‘I love Jesus’ buttons and a placard I couldn’t read,” during the  17th Annual Interfaith Service of Worship, which drew more than 250 people on a freezing cold Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 

“When the opportunity came about, my spouse gestured for her to take a seat. I was standing. Her protest signs were signs about a Jesus that I do not recognize.