Last Saturday my wife and I attended the Martin Luther King Gala in Collins Mississippi. It was a great experience and we got an award for our charity work. I was one of the speakers and I spoke of the race and reconciliation forums we had been holding across our district.

Our forums were about bringing people together to discuss race and solutions. Of course, the common solution was education. Not being a career politician I have no problem discussing tough subjects such as racism. When it comes to race I believe the narrative has been hijacked by the Democrat party. When they claim everything is racist then we must push back and prove otherwise.

My speech at the gala was about coming together and fighting back against stereotyping people by their color and not the content of their character. At my business in Picayune, I had over a hundred employees and most of my supervisors were black. Not because they were black but because they were the best people I had for the job.

At the gala, there were a lot of great speakers. It was good to see that all but one speaker was talking of unity and not division. Most of the speakers were forward-looking and pushed for less divisive speech. All were patriots and loved America. This is the common thread we should all share. As Abe Lincoln said “a house divided against itself will fall” as true today as it was then. “we are not a white America, a black America, a Latino America or an Asian America, we are the United States of America” MLK.