MLK JR DAY CELEBRATIONS IN OSWEGO - KOAM TV 7

Doctor Martin Luther King Jr was known to many as a family man, preacher and a civil rights leader, and every year in January many step out to celebrate his accomplishments.

"The man loved America, he loved people," said Floyd Cavitt, Jr, the Director of the Oswego MLK Jr Day Celebration. 

For the past twenty years Cavitt has held a celebration for his favorite King in Oswego, Kansas--Martin Luther King, Jr. He sees it as a chance for the community to come together, however every year he faces the same problem.

"I've been shot at, nasty letters, tires loosened on my truck, so the truck will veer off on the highway…as long as there is a world, there will be predigest people in the world, but everyone's not predigest," Cavitt said.

But receiving yearly letters doesn't stop Cavitt and about ninety friends, of all ages and races, from coming together and celebrating the positive memories of MLK Jr.

"To me it's like, showing everybody we can all come together as one, we can all live together as one, and get along, and that's the way it should be," said Juanita Armstrong, who has attended the Oswego celebration since the beginning. 

Every year crowds from Little Rock, Arkansas to Kansas City travel to Oswego just to participate in the celebration.

"What he did for the country, he came out of college what at 16, and he was a smart man, and he said I know I'm going to die, I've been to the mountain top, so he knew he was going to die, but he should have stopped, but he didn't. So I'm proud of him and I'm going to keep doing it until the day I die," Cavitt said.  

Cavitt says he hopes to keep the celebration going to help keep Martin Luther King Jr in the forefront of young peoples minds for years to come.