The THREE KINGS OF PEACE: Taking their Mission to a New Location

A few days back, we had one story on a meeting to help curb violence in our community, and another story on the City of Danville needing to decide how to spend its allocated COVID relief money.  A couple days later, 1490 WDAN’s Linda Bolton had three people on her Newsmakers program with a major interest in both topics.  Ed Butler, the local NAACP president, and pastors Frank McCollough and Fred Cowen are known as the Three Kings of Peace for the guidance they offer youngsters.  In fact, it was a youngster at a school they visited that gave them the name.  As Butler recalls, the whole thing goes back about five years.

AUDIO: It started out with myself, Bobo Smalls, and the Reverend McCollum.  That’s when all the violence and the shooting was beginning to ramp up.  And so we came together to combat the situation and sought to bring peace within our community.  So we decided to go out and talk to the young people.

Now, all Three Kings of Peace are working on a special mission.  They’re planning to move their mission into a building, the old Steel Grip facility over at Garfield Park.  As Pastor McCollough explains, they want to be there for kids struggling, or kicked out of school, and give them an opportunity to find purpose in life.

AUDIO: And again I would say that we’re working in conjunction with District 118, and also with Peer Court.  And we have judges on board that understand what we’re doing and how we want to do it, so that we can change the norm and the dynamics within our community.

And as Pastor Cowen mentioned, it’s all about giving them something to do and to believe in.  Anything but idle time.

AUDIO: A biblical saying is “an idle mind is the Devil’s workshop.”  So one of the things we’re trying to do is give them something to do.  So that they want to go to it, and they want to be there, they want to go there.  So then they’ll tell their friends and it will multiply.

Butler says, there is work to do, but they hope to be in that old Steel Grip building within six or seven months.

AUDIO: You know it’s an old building and it’s been vacant for a while, about seven or eight years.  So we’re in the renovation portion of it now.   We’ve got some things to bring it up to code, and we’ve got to do some roof work.

And they all agreed, yes, they will approach Mayor Rickey Williams, Jr about some of the COVID relief money being considered for their facility, as a big part of their mission will be job training, and preparing youngsters for adult life, and the world of work.