McClurkin Off MLK Concert Bill

McClurkin says Mayor Vincent Gray had asked him not to perform, while Gray’s office said the artist had chosen to withdraw.

Whichever version of events is correct, the concert, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the civil rights-era March on Washington, took place without McClurkin.

Gray, according to the Washington Post, had been fielding complaints from gay rights activists before the concert about McClurkin’s scheduled appearance.

The singer has said he was “saved” from the “curse” of homosexuality since 2002. In a video statement, McClurkin he was “asked not to attend” and the mayor “uninvited me from a concert that I was supposed to headline.”

“There should be freedom of speech as long as it’s done in love,” McClurkin said in the video.

He added he found it unfortunate that “a black man, a black artist is uninvited from a civil rights movement depicting the love, the unity, the peace, the tolerance.”

Nolan Williams, the concert’s director, told the Post he would have preferred that McClurkin performed.

“Even in Tiananmen Square, they were singing ‘We Shall Overcome,’” he told the paper. “The fight for human rights is a global fight that has to bring us together. That has to bring us together whenever there are differences of opinion or differences in views.

We still need to find a place to come together even when we don’t agree.”

The concert was one in a series of events marking the anniversary of the March and of King’s “I Have A Dream” speech to continue in Washington, D.C., through Aug. 28.