Nehemiah Flowers Jr., recently retired U.S. marshal for the Southern District of Mississippi, led Monday morning's Starkville/Mississippi State birthday observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the late American civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner. The event was sponsored by the university and Greater Starkville Development Partnership. In 2002, Flowers, a Jackson native and Belhaven University graduate, became one of only two black marshals since Reconstruction.