Five Montgomery Community Leaders Will Receive ‘Juneteenth Celebration/African American Living Legend Awards’ from County Executive Elrich TONIGHT, Friday, June 17

For Immediate Release: Friday, June 17, 2022

Five notable Montgomery County residents will be honored at the “Juneteenth Celebration/Africa American Living Legend Awards” ceremonies at 6:30 p.m. TONIGHT, Friday, June 17, at the BlackRock Center for the Arts in Germantown. Those to be honored are Ida Pearl Green, Rosalyn Cain King, Anita Neal Powell, Ambassador Curtis A. Ward and Alma L. Williams.

County Executive Marc Elrich will present the awards at the ceremonies that are part of the County’s 25th annual celebration of Juneteenth. The awards honor distinguished individuals who are living legends in Montgomery County and have helped shape the cultural heritage of the African American community.

The 2022 Annual African American Living Legend Awards will be presented to five individuals who have dedicated their lives to service, advocacy and selfless acts of kindness to their community.

Award recipients include:

Ida Pearl Green: Known to most simply as “Pearl,” she has been dedicated to the creation of a beloved community in the Quince Orchard area. Though technically only mother to four children, she has served as a matriarch to her community for the majority of her soon to be 104 years. Ms. Green has exemplified the ideals of being a servant leader and demonstrated leadership in all facets of her life, including being a standout in business, civic organizations and within her church community. Ms. Green has been in the workforce most of her adult life, despite the limitations and roadblocks put in her way by Jim Crow segregation. Excluded from many occupations, Ms. Green persevered working for the Federal government, National Geographic and as an AVON representative. Ms. Green was one of the first black AVON representatives in Maryland when she began selling products in 1958. She would walk the streets of African American communities, like Lincoln Park in Rockville, selling products door to door. She became so well-known that most of her clients affectionately referred to her as “Miss AVON.” She won many sales awards.

A long-time member, former Sunday School superintendent and former Methodist women’s chairperson at Pleasant View Methodist Episcopal Church, Ms. Green also was a contributing voice and organizing spirit to the unlikely 1968 merger of Pleasant View Methodist Episcopal Church and two white congregations, McDonald Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church South and Hunting Hill Methodist Church. Ms. Pearl continued to be a leader of the merged congregation. She also continues as an active trustee of the Pleasant View Historical Association, which has the responsibility of preserving the African American legacy of Quince Orchard largely captured in the former Quince Orchard colored schoolhouse, the Pleasant View Methodist Church building and the Pleasant View cemetery.

Rosalyn Cain King: Having devoted her career to addressing pharmacy and public health needs in underserved populations throughout the United States and around the world, Dr. King has achieved a level of excellence demonstrated through program milestones. Her role in caring for patients as a pharmacist was augmented in 1967 at the Watts Health Center in Los Angeles. At Watts, pharmacists had many opportunities to enhance patient care. Community health centers across America replicated the model of pharmacy practice that Dr. King helped create at Watts, providing access to care for patients who needed it most. In 1969, this experience led the American Pharmaceutical (now Pharmacists) Association (APhA) to recruit her to work on the project “The Delivery of Pharmaceutical Services to Poverty Areas of the United States.” She was the first African American pharmacist employed at APhA headquarters and was co-author of the final project report, whose principles and constructs are still in use in many community health programs today.

Dr. King focused on carving unique ways to leverage pharmacists’ expertise within the healthcare team for the benefit of underserved patients. The professional and cultural understanding of underserved populations brought her to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Africa Bureau. A career segment at Howard University followed her global health work at Charles R Drew University of Medicine and Science (1985-1993). At Howard, she had a 15-year relationship that included the development of the Pharmacists and Continuing Education (PACE) Center, a unique program which sought to expand the traditional practice skills of pharmacists in developing communities abroad. In her personal life, Dr. King was consecrated as a Deaconess in 1979 at Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Rockville. 

Anita Neal Powell: Raised in Frederick and having attended Frederick County Public Schools, she moved to Rockville and has been a County resident since 1951. Ms. Neal Powell, who will be 90 in October, is vice president of the Lincoln Park Historical Foundation, a nonprofit community organization; a member and Deaconess of the Mount Calvary Baptist Church; a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Montgomery County chapter; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Montgomery County chapter; and the Rockville Senior Center’s Willing 3C’s.

Known for her Sunday hats worn at Mount Calvary Baptist Church services, in her role with the Lincoln Park Historical Foundation, she continues to work with organizations to provide names of families and children to receive food baskets and toys, especially during Thanksgiving and Christmas/Kwanzaa celebrations. She connects with families and the elderly to make sure that their needs are being met, particularly with resources offered by the County, churches and other organizations. One of her great passions is to mentor young people. She is the mother of 10, the proud grandmother of 30, the great grandmother of 60 and the great-great grandmother of 21.

Ambassador Curtis Ward: Born in Jamaica in 1946, he has been a resident of Montgomery County since 1976. Ambassador Ward earned his BA from Howard University in Economics (1972); his JD from Howard Law School (1975); and his LLM from Georgetown University (1981). At Howard, he became a leader in the Caribbean community and continues to serve several Jamaican and Caribbean civic organizations in the DMV area in advisory and leadership positions. He was a founding member, and then president, of the Jamaica Nationals Association. He served as vice president of the National Association of Jamaican, as chair of the Coalition of Caribbean Affairs and was the founding member and legal advisor to the National Coalition on Caribbean Affairs. In 2007, Ambassador Ward was called upon by then-Montgomery County Executive Isaiah Leggett to organize the Caribbean American Advisory Group. In 2012, then-Governor Martin O’Malley called upon Ambassador Ward to help organize the Governor’s Commission on Caribbean Affairs and to serve as the first chair of the Maryland Commission.

He serves on the board of directors of the Partners of Good Shepherd Jamaica Foundation, a Montgomery County-based charitable organization that serves communities in Jamaica and Maryland. In 2008, he received the James Manoah Bodden Public Service Award from the Caribbean Tourism Development Company. In 2010, he was honored by (St. Elizabeth) Jamaica with the “Best of St. Bess Golden Award” for outstanding achievement in the field of public service and diplomacy.  Ambassador Ward has served with the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee; as senior research consultant for Security Council Reports (a Columbia University-affiliated NGO;) on the Caribbean-Central American Action and as the chairman for the Joint United Nations-Economic Community of West African States Fact-Finding Mission in Abuja and Nigeria. Ambassador Ward continues to advocate that more integration and collaboration among all residents will support unity to strengthen us to impact the decisions that our leaders make.

Alma L. Williams:  She founded the Lewis-Williams Conference & Logistics Management (LCLM), LLC, in 1998, after having been president and CEO of an established graphics design and management company. She heralded LCLM from a two-professional, home-based office to a multi-million dollar, highly respected, competitive company in the information management services arena. LCLM, LLC, provides services to Federal, State and local governments, as well as private sector clients that have included the Albert B. Sabin Vaccine Institutes at Georgetown University and Howard University Hospital.

Ms. Williams has spent much of her life volunteering, serving on boards and holding offices in organizations. She has served with school Parent/ Teacher/Student Associations; the Family Services Agency; Inc.; the Montgomery County Women’s Fair Committee; American Baptist Churches of the South; First Baptist Church of Ken-Gar; and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Previous recipients of the African American Living Legend Award:

2021   

• Elwood Rafael Gray 
• Reverend Dr. Sterling King Jr. 
• Willie Pearl Mackey King 
• John H. Macklin 
• Hercules Pinkney 

2019

• Winston A. Anderson
• Irene Coleman
• Warren Crutchfield
• Arva M. Jackson
• Arthur L. Williams
• The Reverend Dr. Ruby Reese Moone

2018

• Sol Graham
• Arthur Holmes, Jr.
• Harvey Ziegler
• Samuel C. Hamilton, Esq.

2017

• Christine Clarke
• Odessa M. Shannon
• Wilma K. Holmes
• Ruby A. Rubens

2016

• Delores Lincoln-Willis

2015

• Marilyn Hughes Gaston
• Irma Ramsey Cuellar
• Lorraine Elizabeth Mosby

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Release ID: 22-361
Media Contact: Barry Hudson 240-300-7348
Categories: Award