MLK Commission of Florida to host annual MLK Prayer Breakfast in Gainesville

The memory of the late Joseph “Joel” Buchanan will again be honored with the awarding of a scholarship named in his honor by the Martin Luther King Jr. Commission of Florida.

This year’s recipient of the Joseph “Joel” Buchanan Scholarship will be Garyel Tubbs, a senior in the International Baccalaureate program at Eastside High School. Garyel will receive the award during the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Prayer Breakfast at 8 a.m. Friday at the Best Western Gateway Grand Hotel at 4200 NW 97^th Blvd.

As well as Garyel receiving her scholarship, the breakfast will also feature the Rev. Dr. Marie Herring, pastor of Dayspring Baptist Church, receiving the Drum Major for Justice Faith Award.

“I’m very thankful and proud to be the recipient of this scholarship, and I thank the Martin Luther King Jr. Commission for hearing my story," Garyel said. "I definitely do need the funds from the scholarship to help me go to college.”

The Buchanan scholarship, which was created as only the Drum Major for Justice Scholarship in 2013, was renamed in Buchanan’s honor in 2015 a year after his death in 2014. The scholarship is given to an Alachua County high school senior who has overcome obstacles in life and plans to further his or her educational endeavors.

Buchanan was the first black male student to attend Gainesville High School in 1964, when he and two black female students, Sandra Williams Cummings and LaVon Wright Bracy, crossed the segregated-school line in Alachua County. In 1966, Buchanan graduated from GHS with honors and went on to graduate in the early 1970s from the University of Florida with a bachelor's degree. He also earned a master's degree at UF.

He retired in 2010 as a history liaison at the UF Smathers Library Special Collections Department after a professional career that included stints as a teacher at Howard Bishop Middle School and Santa Fe College. He also worked in the UF financial aid office.

Buchanan is best known for his contributions to preserving Black history in Gainesville and Alachua County. He organized an exhibit at Smathers Library that featured the late A. Quinn Jones, a legendary Alachua County Black educator who was the principal at former all-Black Lincoln High School from its creation in the early 1920s until he retired in the late 1950s.

Garyel founded the Black Student Union at Eastside last school year and is the senior class president at the school. Though she has faced and overcome challenges in her young life, the 17-year-old said she has always believed in herself and encourages her peers to always believe in themselves and to “operate in a spirit of abundance,” no matter what challenges they are facing.

MLK Breakfast: King commission will honor Buchanan

Numerous colleges have accepted Garyel, but she said she has narrowed her choices down to two HBCUs – Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, and Howard University in Washington, D.C. She plans to get an undergraduate degree in political science, a graduate degree in African American Studies, before getting a law degree. She also plans to serve in the U.S. Navy, work in public policy and serve in the U.S. Congress.

She credits her grandparents, Cynthia and Gary Tubbs, for instilling strong moral values in her.

Fighting for social justice, equality and against inequities has always been important to her, and she believes it is a “moral obligation and responsibility” to do so, Garyel said.

Garyel received the scholarship because the commission’s scholarship committee was impressed with her application “from the perspective of the challenges she overcame,” said Rodney Long, president and founder of the King Commission.

“She has overcome great challenges as a young person and has continued to matriculate through school at a very high level, especially being a student in the IB program at Eastside,” Long said. “Also, she has a strong commitment to being an advocate for others."

Herring was chosen as the recipient of the Drum Major for Justice Faith Award because of her unselfish commitment serving others in the community, said Long, adding the award is given to a faith leader who exemplifies the nonviolent, social change the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. espoused during his life as the leader of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s in the U.S.

“She has done this work unselfishly over the years in so many ways, from her involvement with the youth and serving the elderly in the community,” Long said.

“I’ve known her all of my life and she has always been community-oriented, is a great espouser of the word of God and is an anointed preacher," Long said.

Herring said she is motivated by the ideals King that focused on racial equality, serving the marginalized, and administering justice for all.

"Jesus said in John 20:21, 'As the Father has sent me, I am sending you," Herring said. "I believe He's sending us to transform lives by enhancing the lives of people through information and resources. I believe He's sending us to transform neighborhoods by preaching the gospel, ending poverty and gun violence. I believe He's sending us to transform the world through prayer, the vote, and using our voice."

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: MLK event in Gainesville to honor local student and pastor