At MLK celebration, Warnock channels King’s legacy to decry ICE raids

Just days after what would have been the Rev. Martin Luther King’s 97th birthday, his daughter and a U.S. senator stood at Ebenezer Baptist Church and called for listeners to carry on King’s legacy by pursuing nonviolent action against President Donald Trump.

Bernice King and Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., criticized Trump’s policies, including his mass deployment of federal immigration agents to Minnesota. Both evoked the name of Renee Nicole Good, the 37-year-old woman who was killed by an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer earlier this month.

“I’m inspired this morning by our neighbors, by ordinary citizens who are standing up in this moment in Minneapolis and all across the country,” said Warnock, senior pastor at the historic church. “Renee Good could’ve stayed in her house. But in the best of the civil rights struggle, she literally put her body on the line, and she paid a high price for it. Now they’re trying to malign her name, but you cannot bury good. Truth crushed to earth shall rise again.”

Bernice King (center, in black and silver) hugs Siara White after White's tribute to Coretta Scott King during the Martin Luther King Jr. Beloved Community Commemorative Service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (Abbey Cutrer/AJC)

King called Good’s death a moral indictment. “Her story forces us to confront a painful truth: Goodness itself is in danger,” she said. Nonviolence, she added, “is how we refuse to let the world normalize the killing of good.”

Throughout the commemorative service, the 58th that’s been held since King’s death in 1968, speakers made implicit and direct references to Trump’s policies.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said tariffs have been turned into weapons that “drive up costs for working families.” The people most hurt by inflation and high prices are, he said, “the very people that Dr. King called us to defend.” And Dickens spoke of citizens across the country being “snatched off the streets, out of their homes and from their workplaces.”

Leading the invocation was the Rev. Sean B. Smith of New Horizon Baptist Church. He referenced immigrants living in fear of deportation, naturalized citizens “whose rights feel fragile” and “the elevation of force over diplomacy.”

Warnock referenced “militarized” streets and federal agents zip-tying children. “Do not feel sorry for immigrant communities as if this does not touch you,” he said. “If they can stop you and ask you to prove that you belong, all of us are in peril.”

A woman sings during worship at the Martin Luther King Jr. Beloved Community Commemorative Service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (Abbey Cutrer/AJC)

Bernice King took direct aim at Trump’s recent interview with The New York Times, when he said that while the Civil Rights Act “accomplished some very wonderful things,” it also “hurt a lot of people” and led to white people being “very badly treated.”

Wearing a black and silver dress that sparkled under the stage lights, King said that her father and other civil rights leaders “did not risk their lives to divide this nation.” The landmark legislation “did not give Black people special treatment,” she said. “It made discrimination illegal. The same discrimination you’re trying to turn around and use.”

“And so, on this King holiday, we are not going backwards,” she said, receiving a standing ovation.

The service featured readings from Jewish and Muslim faith leaders, as well as multiple music numbers. Wanda Temko, a soprano from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, sang “America the Beautiful” while violinist Candice Smith performed “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” The Korean Children’s Choir took a 15-hour flight to perform in front of the crowd. Much of the crowd rose to their feet for Pastor Shirley Caesar and Lady Tramaine Hawkins’ singing of the gospel song “Changed.” U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., was among those in attendance.

Lady Tramaine Hawkins (left) and Pastor Shirley Caesar sing during the Martin Luther King Jr. Beloved Community Commemorative Service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (Abbey Cutrer/AJC)

Students from local high schools and universities recited passages from MLK’s book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”

“I like how they rotate children from different schools to give them the opportunity to have that experience,” said Shunda Francis, a prekindergarten teacher who has attended the commemorative service five times previously.