Lenora Spence didn't consider herself a civil rights activist or a trailblazer when in the early 1960s she put her white-colored clothing into washers on the "whites only" side of a Sawyertown laundromat.

But it was through simple acts of defiance like hers that civil rights leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were able to build a consensus for change that resulted in passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the chance of equality for all Americans, regardless of race.

Justin Falls/The Daily Advance (ENLARGE)

Candy Greene of Elizabeth City sings 'My Nose is Very Cold...' to the tune of 'We Shall Overcome' as she marches on N.C. Highway 343 during the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Celebration in Camden, Monday. Though she was cold - high temperatures Monday only reached into the 30s - Greene said she was excited to be participating in her first march celebrating King?s life and legacy.

VIDEO ECSU march honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Spence, now 87, recalled her decision to flout the laundromat's segregation-era rules Monday during a community breakfast celebrating King, who would have been 78 this month had his life not been cut short in 1968 by an assassin. Hundreds of area residents attended the event at the K.E. White Center.

The Rev. Tony D. Henderson, pastor at Mt. Lebanon A.M.E. Zion Church and speaker for the event, implored his audience not to focus on King's eloquently delivered words alone. Henderson said when King is reduced to just the words from his many speeches, the causes he fought for are forgotten. Besides racial equality, King also fought against the Vietnam War and any kind of injustice, Henderson said.

Following the community breakfast, more than 100 area residents took part in a march from Elizabeth City State University's G.R. Little Library to Cornerstone Missionary Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Drive. Hundreds more took part in a separate march in Camden County from Grandy Primary School to Camden County High School.

In past years the march in Elizabeth City has ended at City Hall. However, because of Monday's frigid temperatures — the highs were only expected to reach into the 30s — organizers routed this year's march to Cornerstone, the church where King himself visited when he stopped in Elizabeth City in the 1960s.

District Court Judge Eula Reid, one of several speakers at Monday's event at Cornerstone, said she's concerned that too many young Americans aren't taking advantage of the opportunities King and others fought so hard to make available to them.

"What saddens me when I go into the courtroom is that I see so many young people either who do not have a dream or do not understand the need for them to have a dream," Reid said. "...When I see so many of our young people dropping out of school ... I wonder if Dr. King and the others who fought so hard, if they would have still fought as hard if they could see us today."

Reid said a number of local blacks have shown what can be achieved through hard work and persistence. She listed Janice Cole, the area's first black district court judge; Charles Foster, Elizabeth City's first black mayor; and W.C. Witherspoon and Cecil Perry, the first and second black men ever to be chairman of the Pasquotank County Board of Commissioners.

Reid said adults need to be better role models for children and do all they can to ensure all kids receive a quality education.

"We have to make sure that our children do not replace the shackles that were on the heels of our ancestors with shackles on their minds," Reid said. "The recent rise in gang violence in our city is a direct affront to Dr. King's dream."

Seventh-grader Keana Rivers, winner of the Pasquotank NAACP's annual essay contest, also called on her generation to do more. Rivers said students need to be more like King, and not let their fears or other barriers hold them back.

"Why settle for being a dentist's assistant when you can be the dentist?" she asked.

Despite America's strides toward equality since King's time, there is still a ways to go, other speakers said.

Keith Rivers, chairman of the Pasquotank County branch of the NAACP, said there is still a great disparity between the poverty rates of blacks and whites. He also said the state of North Carolina spends more per year for the Department of Corrections than for all North Carolina's historically black colleges and universities combined.

Rivers' brother, City Councilman Kirk Rivers, also claimed that black defendants are penalized more severely by the justice system in Pasquotank County than white defendants. He called on authorities to appoint more black magistrates.

Finda Songor, 21, ECSU's junior class president, also believes America has some ways to go toward the society King envisioned.

"I feel like we still do have a lot to fight for," Songor said as she left the program at Cornerstone.

However, Songor also said she came away from Monday's events with a blueprint for how the equality King sought might be achieved.

"(We need to) just continue our own individual dreams and that will help continue his," she said.