The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commission of Mid-Michigan is hosting its 38th annual Day of Celebration in-person this year. The sold-out event will also be broadcast once again.
Because of the pandemic, the event was broadcast locally for the past two years.
In 2021, the program featuring Bernice King as a keynote speaker won a statewide Emmy.
Commission Chairperson Elaine Hardy says she’s thrilled to welcome Fred Gray as this year’s featured guest.
The prominent civil rights attorney defended Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks during the Montgomery bus boycott.
“He was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s attorney and he is probably most widely cited for his representation of the Tuskegee syphilis victims,” Hardy said.
This year’s theme is “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.”
The quote comes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous I Have A Dream speech.
“What I hope people take away from [this year’s theme] is that we can move there, that we can do the work to get there, that it is not an ideal that is unobtainable,” Hardy said. “What will sustain us as a nation, as a community, is seeking to be brothers to one another.”
Hardy said coming off of living in a pandemic for two years crystalized how inextricably tied to one another people are.
She adds that coming together in-person this year is significant and that the commission is pleased to have an audience again.
“There is this energy in the room that you don’t get anywhere else, right, it happens on that day because we are all there around a common cause, in a common belief in our beloved community, there to celebrate the life and the legacy that Dr. King left all of us,” Hardy said.
The in-person event is sold-out but will be broadcast Jan. 16 at 7:00 p.m. on WLNS.
