WEST POINT — At 9 a.m. EST on Monday, Jan. 21, Bethlehem Baptist Church will be hosting the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Day Breakfast.

The Lambda Zeta Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. is the sponsoring organization, and the Rev. Jesse J. Walker II, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Lanett, will be the guest speaker.

The Rev. W.T. Edmondson is the pastor of the home church.

This past Tuesday would have been the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 90th birthday.

He was 39 years old when assassinated in Memphis in 1968.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a federal holiday observed on the third Monday in January since 1986.

Dr. King was the chief spokesperson for nonviolent activism in the Civil Rights Movement, which protested racial discrimination in federal and state law.

The campaign for the federal holiday in King’s honor began soon after his assassination.

President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later. It was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000.

Alpha Kappa Alpha is the first Greek-lettered sorority established by African-American college women.

Consisting of college-educated women of many diverse backgrounds from all around the world, AKA today has more than 300,000 members in more than 1,000 chapters across the U.S.