The message from Anderson’s City-Wide Celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day echoed loudly Monday afternoon.

“Love is the single most essential expression of all humanity!” proclaimed Jesse Wilkerson, a local architect who gave a brief but impassioned speech on love and what it means to carry Dr. King’s legacy in today’s world.

Wilkerson and many others gathered to honor the fallen civil rights legend at the Paramount Theatre Centre in Anderson.

Anita J. Harden, guest speaker, spoke of breaking through glass ceilings and a committee gave Tim Long, former superintendent of Anderson Community Schools, the inaugural James Cameron Award for his service in the community.

A choir of preschoolers wearing matching red T-shirts lined the front of the stage early in the program. They sang a round of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” then the audience joined in support.

Donald Volk, executive director of the Paramount, introduced Long for the Cameron award. Long was chosen for his service to the Anderson community and promoting the ideas of peace, unity and equality, Volk said.

Long gave a short but emotional acceptance speech, nearly breaking into tears from the outset. He thanked the community and “those who’ve gone before us,” paying special homage to longtime Anderson businessman, radio personality and civil rights advocate Will Carter, who died in the fall.

“We can’t forget that as we look to our past, the future was up here singing today. The children are why we’re here,” Long said, referring to the children who had sung moments earlier.

Wilkerson pleaded with the crowd to reach out with love to others regardless of race or creed, to seek a clear identity as a community and use that dialogue as a springboard for success.

Harden, the president of Community Hospital East in Indianapolis, spoke of the hardships undergone by her and her family throughout the years.

As a woman who is black, she spoke of coming to age during the 1960s and challenging assumptions that said those two traits were disadvantages. She eventually rose to the top of her field through her career in nursing with a knack for leadership.

Of particular interest, she said she was born in her mother’s home in the South when black women weren’t allowed into maternity wards at hospitals.

“Although then I couldn’t be born in a hospital, today I lead a hospital,” Harden said, citing that fact as a testament to progress made so far by the civil rights movement.

As for other ironies created by the civil rights movement, U.S. Rep. Mike Pence recounted the bygone days of the Paramount Theatre, which, like other venues in the past, had segregated seating.

“It is exciting to think how appropriate it is that we gather here at the Paramount to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and we have mixed seating,” Pence said. He hailed the late Baptist minister as an American hero and an “archetypal Christian leader rightly able to handle the word of truth in the Bible.”