It would be harder to find a more passionate advocate for North St. Louis at City Hall than Alderman Bennice Jones King, whose 21^st Ward includes the O’Fallon, Penrose and Greater Ville neighborhoods.

So when another neighborhood institution — the Annie Malone Parade — decided to move downtown, King was crestfallen.

Then she got even.

The annual May parade — scheduled this year for Sunday — announced in 2006 that it would move from the Ville, where it had been for years, to downtown in an attempt to increase visibility and corporate sponsorship.

But since the route change, King has trumpeted her own celebration, the “African-American Heritage Festival,” that just so happens also to take place on Sunday, at the same time as the Malone Parade, and in Fairground Park — the heart of the old parade route.

Perhaps sensing the tension, Alderman Sam Moore, who also represents part of the Greater Ville, said at today’s board meeting that, he encouraged constituents to attend the Heritage Festival - but only after the Annie Malone Parade.

Jones King