Brookshire, Fort Bend residents plan activities for MLK Day

Contributed Reports
Posted 1/12/23

The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is set for Monday, and while government offices and schools will be closed, the I-10 West/Brookshire MLK Celebration activities are set for public enjoyment.

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

Brookshire, Fort Bend residents plan activities for MLK Day

Posted

The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is set for Monday, and while government offices and schools will be closed, the I-10 West/Brookshire MLK Celebration activities are set for public enjoyment.

Festivities take place both Friday and Saturday. On Friday, Nooney & the Zydeco Floaters, along with Koray Broussard & the Zydeco Unit, will be giving a concert. The show begins at 7 p.m. at Baa Baa Brewhouse, 539 FM 359 in Brookshire. Presale tickets cost $25.

Festivities continue with a Saturday morning block party and afternoon parade.

The block party is set for 10 a.m.-12 p.m. at Little Zion Baptist Church, 4010 4th St. in Brookshire. The party will have a carnival theme and feature a barbecue cookoff.

The parade begins at 12 p.m. at the church.

Event sponsors include the City of Brookshire, Joshua Grand Lodge of Texas, Word of Promise Church, and Greater Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, along with community members.

For more information, contact Keith Woods at 281-248-3832.

Volunteer project seeks to restore slave cemeteries in Fort Bend County

Volunteers led by former U.S. Rep. Pete Olson of Sugar Land and Dexter McCoy, Exchange Club of Sugar Land commissioner, will be restoring two historic Fort Bend County cemeteries.

The project runs from 8:30-11:30 a.m. Monday at Fort Bend County’s Bates Allen Park, which is the site of the historic Newman Chapel Cemetery and the historic Oak Hill Cemetery. The park is at 630 Charlie Roberts Lane in Kendleton.

Volunteers will tour the cemeteries and help clean tombstones and removing brush overgrowth that restricts access to historic gravesites for family and the public.

The restoration efforts began after the discovery of the tombstone of Benjamin Franklin Williams, which had fallen into disrepair in February 2022. Volunteers from the Exchange Club made six visits to Bates Allen Park that year to clean tombstones, clear access to tombstones from overgrowth, and reconstruct tombstones that had fallen over.

Williams was a slave for the first 46 years of his life. After becoming a free man in 1865, Williams became the first Black to be recognized by the State of Texas as a Methodist minister.

Williams served three terms representing Fort Bend County in the Texas House of Representatives, where he was the first man of color to receive votes to be the Speaker of the Texas House. He died on Feb. 27, 1886, and is buried in Newman Chapel Cemetery.

When members of the Exchange Club first visited his gravesite, his tombstone had fallen into the mud and was covered with weeds and fire ant beds. Volunteers righted the tombstone and cleaned it, but maintenance of this tombstone and the thirty other tombstones in both historic cemeteries must be constant. The Jan. 16 visit is the first visit for 2023.

For more information, contact Olson at pgointex@hotmaiil.com or McCoy at dexter.fbc@gmail.com.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Brookshire, Fort Bend cemeteries