Photos by JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times

People pray at Roanoke's Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on Monday. "The struggle is not over," one participant said.

Area members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led about 100 people in a short march that began at Roanoke's Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Bridge.

JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times

"You are a child of God" the Rev. Brad Braxton told about 400 people gathered for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration at the Hotel Roanoke. "This is the truth for which Dr. King lived and died."

Noting that Martin Luther King Jr.'s campaign for civil rights was rooted in his religious beliefs, the Rev. Brad Braxton marked Monday's holiday in King's honor by exhorting a crowd at the Hotel Roanoke to see themselves as God's children and everyone as their family.

Such an approach, he suggested, would honor each individual's worth to God and lead to a "much more peaceful" world.

"Since we are all kinfolk, let's stop fighting one another and start loving one another and living with one another in peace and dignity," said Braxton, a Roanoke Valley native, author and biblical scholar with a national reputation. "I know who I really am -- I am a child of God. You are a child of God. This is the truth for which Dr. King lived and died."

More than 400 people attended the Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast hosted by the North Carolina A&T State University Alumni Association.

For Braxton, the featured speaker, the event marked a temporary return to the Roanoke Valley from a career that has taken him to New York City and Chicago.

His father, the late Rev. James Braxton, served three decades as pastor of First Baptist Church in Salem. The younger Braxton was a Rhodes scholar at the University of Virginia and went on to become professor of religion at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., before being named pastor of New York's Riverside Church in 2008. A congregational divide, however, prompted him to resign last year, and he now lives in Chicago.

Braxton reminded the audience that King was first and foremost a preacher. And as a preacher, Braxton said, King used the Bible to effectively argue that all men and women are important to God, regardless of the color of their skin.

"In so many ways this world would be so much more peaceful if each of us understood how much we matter to God," Braxton said. "All skin will eventually turn to dust. Everyone in here this morning has a date with the dust, and your reservation does not have the privilege of cancellation."

Later in the day, members of the Roanoke chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led about 100 people in a short march. The group started their walk at the King statue at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Bridge and proceeded to the nearby First Baptist Church, singing "We Shall Overcome."

"The struggle is not over," participant Barbara Duerk said. "It continues in our city, our country and our neighborhoods."