March for Voting Rights

On June 27, 2026 more than 100 people came together at Sally M. Fox Park from three starting points – Piedmont Wagon, Ridgeview Recreation Center, and St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church – in a march organized by the Indivisible Citizens of Catawba Valley (ICCV) to bring attention to the paramount importance of voting and voting rights.

At the park, chants and singing were followed by a formal program. Rev. Reggie Longcrier of Exodus Missionary Baptist Church introduced keynote speaker Rev. Steve Allen of Greensboro. A UNC Chapel Hill-trained attorney, Rev. Allen was the first elected Black Superior Court Judge in Guilford County since Reconstruction. More recently, he was pastor of Greensboro’s Shiloh Baptist Church and resident of the Pulpit Forum of Greensboro.

In his remarks, Rev. Allen spoke about the goal of the nation’s founders to create a framework that would continue “to form a more perfect union.”

“The Constitution sets forth the framework, the blueprint,” Allen said, “and it gives power to the people...not solely to the President, not solely to Congress, and not solely to the Supreme Court.” 

While the U.S. system of government was designed for the people to have power, Allen continued, “there are certain people in this country who want to divide us -- because they know that if we are united; if we come together as one; if we come together; if we are united as one, then we have the power to really and truly be free; to have good jobs; to have affordable housing; to have a good and sound education for our children and our children’s children.”

Turning to the multiple efforts to suppress the right to vote, Rev. Allen continued, “If the right to vote was not important to preserving our freedoms in our country why in the world would they be working so hard to take the right to vote away from us?  It is because they know that power belongs to the people.” 

Click for more images from our event and some of Rev. Allen’s remarks