February 4, 2025

The Beloved Community Awards at The King Center by Joy Bailey-Bryant

To start the month off, we’ll hand it over to our President and Managing Partner Joy Bailey-Bryant, to share her experience of attending the Beloved Community Awards at The King Center in Atlanta, Georgia.  

Established in 1968 by Mrs. Coretta Scott King, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (‘The King Center’) was envisioned to be “no dead monument, but a living memorial filled with all the vitality that was his, a center of human endeavor, committed to the causes for which he lived and died.” 

“The Beloved Community Awards are held every year to recognize individuals and organizations keeping Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy alive, and I was thrilled to be invited.  

It was a gathering of beautiful universal and Black excellence and it was truly amazing to share space with some of the most positive humans making changes across the globe.  

The actress Jenifer Lewis, who received the Higher Ground Award, shared how every time she goes to a figurative mountaintop, she invokes Dr. Martin Luther King and asks herself: ‘How can I bring others with me? How do I move forward?’ And that's what these awards are about. 

Accepting the award on behalf of Black Voters Matter, LaTosha Brown suddenly broke into song, and everyone joined in: ‘By and by, when the morning comes, when the saints of God are gathered home/we’ll tell the story, how we’ve overcome, for we’ll understand it better by and by.  

Everyone spoke very frankly about how we're going into a time where people are feeling a lot of fear, and the message was very clear: We cannot look away. We have to stay awake. We have to be attentive. We have to work very hard to ensure that the progress that we've made over the years continues.  

I don't know how many times the word love was spoken that night, because love is a strategy. I very much feel that as a company, we have an opportunity to change the world through fostering and empowering that love. 

A huge thank you to everyone I got to meet that night, and to Bernice A. King for your community-forward, love-leading leadership. I am grateful and ready.” 

Learn more about The King Center, and stay tuned as we share more of our team’s stories throughout the month.