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Jenna Laine, ESPN Staff WriterJan 15, 2024, 11:19 AM ET
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- Jenna Laine covers the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for ESPN. She started covering the Bucs for ESPN in 2016, but she has covered the team since 2009. Follow Jenna on Twitter: @JennaLaineESPN.
TAMPA, Fla. — For the first time, Martin Luther King III and his family will attend an NFL game to honor his late father, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to commemorate MLK Day when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers host the Philadelphia Eagles on “Monday Night Football.”
The King family — Martin III; his wife, Arndrea Waters King; and their daughter, Yolanda Renee King — will serve as honorary Buccaneers team captains and will participate in the coin toss. The Buccaneers will honor Dr. King’s legacy throughout the game with videoboard tributes and graphics, and the Bethune-Cookman University Concert Chorale will perform the songs “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” “I Can See Clearly Now,” and “Way Over in Beulah Lan’.”
As part of wild-card weekend coinciding with MLK Day, all six playoff games have featured “MLK” and “Be Love” decals on player helmets. End zones have been painted with the words “Be Love,” a phrase and a movement that the King Center — led by Dr. Bernice King, daughter of Dr. King — has adopted, along with “It Takes All of Us.”
The NFL recently pledged a five-year commitment to Realizing the Dream, a platform the King family created, calling for 100 million hours of service by the 100th anniversary of Dr. King’s birth on Jan. 15, 2029.
