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Four to five hundred people marched in the streets of the state capital in honor of in Martin Luther King today. Marchers began at the city bus terminal, symbolic for a 1950’s bus boycott over segregation, and ended at a park, known as Cascades, which is one the original sites surveyors used in deciding Tallahassee should be selected as the Capital. FAMU interim President and Keynote speaker Dr. Larry Robinson noted that today’s march was not marred by the obstacles of civil rights era marches.

“We must consider ourselves extremely fortunate on this day in 2017. We did not have to face hostile mobs, vicious police dogs and even policeman themselves who did not welcome those who marched in decades past. Instead we were actually escorted by law-enforcement many of them joining us” said Robinson.

Several marchers wore shirts decrying the state’s clemency laws, which deny voting rights to convicted felons, even though they have paid their debt to society. The Florida Supreme Court will consider an amendment later this year for the 2018 ballot that would automatically restore voting rights in non violent cases.