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Campus Life Staff from Tate Center confront a man preaching at the Tate Plaza after he refused to stop preaching during an event put on by the Hispanic Student Association.

Preacher stalls Latino rights rally

Not deterred, to return to Tate

By: CAREY O'NEIL

Posted: 10/10/08

A shouting match broke out at Tate Plaza Thursday when an open air preacher interrupted a scheduled rally by the Hispanic Student Association.

Celina Correa, the organization's president, told Brother JK to stop preaching when he showed up at Tate Plaza toting a poster board that condemned various groups such as "ankle biters" and "sports nuts."

"I asked him to stop talking because we were going to have a speaker," Correa said. Her group had reserved the plaza for Sylvia Mendez, an American civil rights activist, to speak.

"I'm glad he's here," Mendez said. "He has a right to be here." But she said she was sorry the fight even happened.

"I'm allowed to be here," Brother JK said. "I felt the Lord lead me here." Correa was rude when she approached him, he said. "She was yelling at me that I had to leave or else she'd call the cops."

"He has a right to be here," Correa said. "We just wanted him to be respectful."

When a Tate official came out and spoke with JK, he quieted down and moved aside, but not before insulting Correa.

"He called me a hypocrite," she said. "I'm just asking for a little respect."

"It's ironic that something like this would happen at a rally about civil rights," said Erin Thompson, an employee of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, who witnessed the conflict.

"It's one thing to come here to preach, but it's another to get in the way of our assembly."

JK said he wasn't deterred by conflicts such as this.

"I think we really make a difference. We get a lot of people who argue with us and yell at us, but we're spreading the word of God," he said.

JK and his wife, Sister Evangelista, are "committed to publicly proclaiming the truth of God's word to everyone" according to their Web site, BemaMinistries.com.

This was JK's first visit to the University, and he said he would return before heading to the Southeast Open Air Preachers' Association

fall conference in Marietta on Oct.15.