Deputy Sheriff Jamar Cotton to speak at MLK Breakfast

Doña Ana County Deputy Sheriff Jamar Cotton will be the keynote speaker at the Doña Ana County NAACP’s Martin Luther King Breakfast, which will begin at 8 a.m. Monday, Jan. 16, at the Las Cruces Convention Center, 680 E. University Ave.

Tickets to the breakfast are $30. Visit naacpdac.org/asp-products/mlk-2023-breakfast/ to purchase tickets.

DAC NAACP’s MLK Rally will begin at 2 p.m. the day before the breakfast, Sunday, Jan. 15, at Plaza de Las Cruces, 100 S. Main St. downtown.

Cotton is a native of Irvington, New Jersey, who came to New Mexico State University on a football scholarship. Since his graduation from NMSU in 2010, Cotton has devoted thousands of hours to public service as a mentor, fitness instructor and motivational speaker, among many other volunteer roles.

Cotton is county coordinator of the Martin Luther King Jr. Commission Youth Leadership Program.

King was born Jan. 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was assassinated April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. A Baptist minister and civil rights leader, he earned a doctorate in systematic theology from Boston University. King led the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, where, on Dec. 5, 1955, Rosa Parks, a Black woman, was arrested for refusing to give her seat on a bus to a white person. The boycott lasted Dec. 5, 1955-Dec. 20, 1956.

King helped organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, during which he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. He won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states beginning in 1971. President Ronald Reagan made it a federal holiday in 1986.

Visit http://naacpdac.org.