Despite bitterly cold weather, the season’s first snowfall and a new push to do away with diversity efforts in public schools, more than 1,300 people attended Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Breakfast.

That was no surprise to Paula Anderson, who has been attending the Alpha Phi Alpha Lexington Unity breakfast for decades.

“This event has become a cornerstone of the community,” said Anderson, president and CEO of the YMCA of Central Kentucky, who also served as this year’s emcee of the event.

Alpha Beta Lambda chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha created the breakfast 30 years ago as part of Lexington’s Martin Luther King Jr. annual celebration. During Monday’s annual unity breakfast, the works and words of King were heightened as new threats to civil rights and equality loomed.

Two bills in the Republican-controlled legislature would do away with diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at universities and all public schools.

Democrat Gov. Andy Beshear, who has criticized the legislation, pledged during Monday’s breakfast to continue to work toward equality and justice for all Kentuckians, regardless of race.

“It’s more important than ever that we listen to the words of Dr. Martin Luther King,” Beshear said during a pre-taped address at the breakfast at Central Bank Center. Kentucky has seen tremendous economic growth, he said. But with “success comes responsibility, a responsibility to make sure the success that we are seeing reaches every single Kentuckian. To do that we must end the racial injustice that continues to hurt people and holds our society back from its full potential.”

Beshear pledged to make education more equitable, by raising teacher pay and pushing for universal preschool.

“When we are intentional in our actions, we can make difference. We can not stop and we will not stop,” Beshear said.

Mayor Linda Gorton also said the city has made strides in fulfilling the more than 50 recommendations of the Commission on Racial Justice and Equality, which released its final report in 2020 in the wake of widespread civil rights protests.

“Although we have made progress, our work continues,” Gorton said. “We remain dedicated to the goals set out in the commission’s report.”

A member of Gorton’s staff, Devine Carama, the director of One Lexington, was honored by the fraternity for his work in the community. In addition to One Lexington, a youth violence prevention program, Carama also heads various community efforts including annual coat drives and the Luna Library, a library dedicated to providing Black literature to youth. The library is named after Carama’s daughter, Kamaria, who died in a car accident in 2020.

“Unity is sacrifice,” Carama said. “We sacrifice what we want to do, our own personal goals, for the greater good of the collective.”

Carama said he was honored someone in the community looked to him as “someone who can help unify people.”

Others spoke Monday of how King’s message, his drive and his passion should be lived, not just remembered.

Veda Stewart, an education consultant, said King believed “education was a necessary part of the plan toward a more just society.”

Yet inequality in education remains, Stewart said.

“Sixty years later there is still a reckoning required that systemic and systematic racism be abolished,” Stewart said.

King would question the latest attacks on equality in public education, including recent efforts to ban diversity, equity and inclusion.

“The dream of educational equality is still at large,” Stewart said. It’s past time to move the dream of equality in schools forward, she said. The tools to do that are here in Lexington, she said.

“I believe today we are the answer to our own dreams.”

Also on Monday, the annual Freedom March through downtown Lexington, which attracted more than 8,000 people in 2023, was expected to start at 1 p.m. followed by the keynote speech by Rev. Kevin W. Cosby.