Churches and other religious institutions can join civic, community and political organizations in the DeKalb NAACP’s 10th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Parade and Rally in Stone Mountain.

The parade through the streets of the city will take place on the national holiday, which is celebrated this year on Jan. 16.

The national holiday commemorates the Jan. 15, 1929, birthday of the civil rights icon.

The parade will take off at 12:30 p.m. from the MARTA parking lot on Fourth Street.

Parade organizer Sarah Copelin-Wood says marchers don’t have to pre-register.

“They just need to show up,” she said, adding that participants should gather at 11:30 a.m.

Marching bands from Cedar Grove, Clarkston, Martin Luther King Jr., McNair and Stone Mountain high schools will participate, and 4th District U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson and DeKalb School Superintendent Cheryl Atkinson will be grand marshals.

Copelin-Wood, who is also the DeKalb District 3 School Board member, said participants are encouraged to carry banners celebrating King’s legacy.

King, a Baptist pastor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is the most well-known leader of African-Americans’ struggle for civil rights in the 1960s. He would have been 83 years old on Jan. 15.

He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., at the age of 39. He was in Memphis to support a march of sanitation workers who were protesting unequal wages and working conditions.

Today, 50 states and 100 countries worldwide celebrate his birthday.

The NAACP marches in Stone Mountain because in King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, he said: “Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!”

A rally immediately follows the parade in the Champion Middle School gym at 5265 Mimosa Drive in Stone Mountain.

For more information, e-mail Copelin-Wood at schoolsandcommunity@yahoo.com or call 404 371-1490.