photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

A photo of the late-Martin Luther King, Jr. is shown on a large video board at the 17th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Breakfast on Jan. 15, 2024 at Maceli's Banquet Hall in downtown Lawrence.

William Dulin understood the importance of two simple words growing up a Black boy in 1950s Lawrence: “To go.”

His grandmother had told him the rules many times. There are businesses you can go into, “but you get what you came to get and you go outside.”

A drugstore on the southern stretch of Massachusetts Street — across from a popular youth baseball field in South Park — was such a “get it and go place” in the mid-1950s.

That’s why Dulin had his dime in hand and ready. He wanted a 10-cent Coca-Cola — to go. He stood at the counter ready to make his order and his exit. The waitress, though, never once stopped. Back and forth, back and forth waiting on other customers.

Dulin quickly realized that he would have no luck getting a Coca-Cola from this waitress. But a white boy that he had shared victory and defeat with on the neighborhood baseball field also was in the store. Dulin asked his teammate if he could order him a Coca-Cola — to go.

Nothing could be simpler, the white boy thought. For the most part, it was. A few seconds later he returns with a Coca Cola — in a glass. The words “to go” were just two words to a white boy in 1950s America, and this one had forgotten to utter them.

Dulin now had a Coke but not necessarily a smile.

A Black boy sure shouldn’t walk out of a drugstore carrying a glass owned by the drugstore. So, he drank his Coca-Cola, all the while watching the waitress who had seen the white boy turn around and give it to his friend.

“I remember her face,” Dulin — now the Rev. Dulin — told a crowd at the 17th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Breakfast on Monday morning in downtown Lawrence. “It was red and she wasn’t smiling.”

It is a face that has bounced around the mind of Dulin for more than 60 years now.

“To this day, I wonder why she was so upset,” Dulin told the crowd. “Was it because she gave a cold drink to a little Black boy, or was she embarrassed she went against the establishment’s rules? I don’t know why, but I know it happened. I wonder to this day why it made her so angry.”

Dulin — a longtime pastor at Lawrence’s Calvary Church of God in Christ — was a keynote speaker at Monday’s MLK Day celebration, along with Leo Barbee, the longtime pastor at Lawrence’s Victory Bible Church. The two pastors were instrumental in the founding of Lawrence’s annual MLK Celebration, and have for years played key roles in organizing the event, which is now hosted by the Jayhawk Breakfast Rotary Club.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Pastors William Dulin and Leo Barbee were the keynote speakers at the 17th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Breakfast on Jan. 15, 2024 at Maceli’s Banquet Hall in downtown Lawrence.

The duo answered questions from both a moderator and members of the crowd that gathered at Maceli’s Banquet Hall in downtown.

Barbee, who has been in Lawrence since 1976, has heard and experienced many such stories of racial discrimination that have happened in the community and elsewhere. He often tells young people to control their anger over such injustices because “bitter does not make better.”

But controlling bitterness doesn’t mean you stop fighting for better. “I’m not a pacifist. I’m a realist,” Barbee told the crowd.

Barbee said he is not shy to tell people that America is growing worse from a moral standpoint as Americans grow farther apart from each other and from God. He’s also not afraid to preach about the value of an apology.

“Saying ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘will you forgive me,’ makes all the difference in the world,” Barbee told the crowd. “A lot can be done when you say ‘we’re wrong, we were wrong.’ America has to face the fact that we were wrong in a lot of things.”

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

State Rep. Barbara Ballard was among the members of the crowd at the 17th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Breakfast on Jan. 15, 2024 at Maceli’s Banquet Hall in downtown Lawrence.

Both men said there were solid ways to help promote change. One of them is to focus on reaching somebody rather than worrying about reaching everybody, Dulin said. He also urged the crowd to not buy into the idea that change must be slow. When a member of the audience asked what he expected in race relations over the next four to five years, he answered the question with a different timeline.

“There is a lot that can happen in just one year,” Dulin said. “If your heart wants to do right, you can do right. Don’t wait four or five years. Start today. Treat the next person like you would want to be treated.”

Barbee said change becomes even more possible when people realize their goals and dreams aren’t that different. Barbee told a story of his late brother-in law who was in the Air Force. A fellow service member one day asked him “what do you Black folk want?”

“My brother-in law said ‘I tell you what you do, take one white sheet of paper — no, take out two — and list everything you want for your family,'” Barbee said. “Then he said, ‘sign my name. I don’t want any more or any less. I just want the opportunities that you have. I want the same thing.'”

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Helena Gutierrez-Gibbs, a Bishop Seabury student, received the Pastors Barbee, Dulin and Winn Minority Scholarship at the 17th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Breakfast on Jan. 15, 2024 at Maceli’s Banquet Hall in downtown Lawrence.