MLK Day celebrations around the Houston area were postponed Monday due to freezing weather and hazardous road conditions.
Late Sunday night, the city of Houston announced that it was postponing its 46th annual Downtown Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade and a separate Midtown parade due to weather-related public safety concerns for parade participants, observers and first responders, Mayor John Whitmire said in a news release, following the advice of Houston Police Chief Troy Finner, Houston Fire Department Chief Sam Peña, and George Buenik, director of the Mayor’s Office of Homeland Security and Public Safety.
“For several years, the city of Houston and the Black Heritage Society have joined to hold the parade to honor Dr. King’s life and legacy,” Whitmire said. “While we will not be able to come together because of the forecast for dangerous wintery conditions, I urge everyone to take a moment on MLK Day to reflect on Dr. King’s teachings. Please check in on your family, friends, and neighbors to ensure they have what they need during the day and evening tomorrow.”
The rescheduled date of the 46th annual “Original” MLK Day parade, hosted by Whitmire and the Black Heritage Society, remains unclear. A second MLK parade, the 30th Grande Parade, also has yet to be rescheduled.
The MLK Boulevard trail ride originally scheduled for 11 a.m. in Southeast Houston, was also postponed, but organizers say a rescheduled date is “up in the air.”
Due to freezing temperatures, record-breaking electric demand, and unseasonably low wind, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas asked Texans to conserve power from 6-10 a.m. on Monday. Houstonians woke up Monday morning to freezing temperatures topped with rain, sleet, ice and snow. Temperatures are expected to drop into the mid-20s tonight with wind gusts of 15 to 20 miles per hour, according to Eric Berger, a meteorologist with Space City Weather.
In the 47 years since the annual trail ride began, it has only been canceled once, and it was also due to poor weather conditions, said Brandon Humphrey-Wilson, an organizer and the grandson of founder Henry “T-90” Davidson, whom the annual ride is named after.
“We’re a little sad about it,” he said Sunday night. “We were definitely planning to go out tomorrow ‘cause we always have the ride — rain, sleet or snow— we do ride. But we always have to think about the safety of others.”
Humphrey-Wilson said it was ultimately his grandfather’s decision, but without the presence of the Houston Police Department to control traffic, offer security and escort the thousands of riders on horseback through the Sunnyside streets, it proposed a larger risk to operate it themselves.
“We have had a long standing relationship with the trail ride. It is through our cooperation that we were able to make a decision to postpone the event for everyone’s safety,” Finner said.
“I was looking forward to it,” Davidson said dishearteningly Sunday night. “All my people from Louisiana, Austin and Huntsville, they drove in. They wanted to ride, they ready. Cold weather don’t stop some of them.”
Davidson is the driving force behind Sunnyside’s annual T-90’s MLK trail ride. While most Houstonians know about the MLK day parade or participate in volunteer services to commemorate the holiday, T-90s trail ride has largely flown under the radar. However, some have long known it to be a staple celebration in Houston’s Black community, routinely drawing people from across the U.S. to tailgate, camp out and enjoy zydeco music.
The trail ride was the inaugural MLK Day celebration in Houston, launching before the city’s MLK Day Parade in 1978, which was also the first of its kind in the U.S.
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