Madison Myers, Rickey Phillips and Joshua Myers march in the M.L. King Day parade on Monday, January 20, 2014, in Chattanooga, Tenn.The group that has hosted Chattanooga’s M.L. King Day parade for decades won’t participate this year, it says.
The city of Chattanooga is putting on the parade after the Unity Group declined to host it, city leaders said Saturday.
Late Sunday evening, Unity Group President Sherman Matthews sent a news release announcing the boycott and slamming the city for what he called a “governmental nuclear option to orchestrate a deliberate and hostile takeover of the MLK March and parade.”
Matthews had ignored requests for comment Saturday when Mayor Andy Berke’s spokeswoman, Lacie Stone, said the city would host the march after the Unity Group canceled.
Stone said Saturday the group had known since November that, for the first time, it needed to obtain liability insurance to get a parade permit. The group didn’t provide the certificate until well into the week, she said, and the parade permit was issued Thursday.