While it would be impossible for Annie Malone Children and Family Services Executive Director Richard King to come right out and say “we want more white people involved the Annie Malone Parade,” that’s the only conclusion one can come to upon hearing that the parade will be moving downtown and the reasoning behind it.
More than 100,000 people currently attend the parade as it makes its way down Natural Bridge. A conservative estimate is that 95 percent of parade viewers are black. It is doubtful that 95,000 black people will attend the parade in 2006, which will now head East on Market Street from Jefferson to Broadway.
So, there might be fewer people, but the crowd and supporters of the parade might contain more of the “right people.”
One of Richard King’s priorities, because there have been deep funding cuts, is to find critical financial resources for Annie Malone. If more corporations and wealthy individuals become involved with Annie Malone, it would benefit many members of the African-American community.
Since crowd control and violence are not reasons for moving the parade, according to King, then the reasons must involve attracting new sponsors for the parade with new dollars for Annie Malone.
King has danced around questions for moving the parade with diplomatic terms like “more inclusion” and “opening the parade up to more people.”
Black Alderwoman Bennice Jones King asks rhetorically “who are they trying to make the parade more accessible to?,” as if to not offend some unknown group of people in the St. Louis region.
Both Kings know why the parade is being moved, and both should be more honest with the public as to why this is happening.
