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Black History Breakfast 2026 Emcee
On February 4, our own Brenda Beadenkopf was honored to be emcee for the Cass County Black History Breakfast from 7:30-9:30am, hosted and sponsored by the Council on Aging, the Social Justice Alliance of Cass County, and 
the Minority Coalition of Cass County in Cassopolis, Michigan.
She started the morning off by telling some Black History stories from her own Philadelphia Quaker upbringing. How her Quaker parents raised her and her five siblings in two communities that intentionally raised their children with Black, White, Jewish and Asian neighbors during the 1950’s and 60’s, when defacto racial segregation was the norm.
Brenda also talked of her mother Marian Walker helping to de-segregate traditionally Black Cheyney University when it was Cheyney College, by being the first hiring for a racial quota in its Administration after Civil Rights legislation was enacted.
Beadenkopf conclud
ed her talk with the amazing story of her Philadelphia Quaker father, Charlie Walker, who worked with Martin Luther King in the Civil Rights Movement as an expert in nonviolence, who assisted with training the leaders in nonviolence and writing training materials. She put in a plug for her books written about her parents, A Quaker Behind the Dream:Charlie Walker and the Civil Rights Movement, sold on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and read two selections from letters from King to Walker, one of them with King writing: “Let me express my personal appreciation to you for the interest you have taken in our struggle. Your moral support and Christian generosity give us renewed courage and vigor to carry on.”