Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2026
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Bates is a community-wide opportunity to discuss, teach, and reflect on the legacy of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.
This year’s observance, centered on Sunday and Monday, Jan. 18–19, explores the theme of anger in social justice work. The 2026 keynote speaker is philosopher Myisha Cherry, whose work is informed by moral psychology and political philosophy. There is a lot to fear these days: economic uncertainty, raging wars, political turmoil, and social upheaval are widespread. In this sense, our era isn’t so different from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s time — an age he described as one of “catastrophic change and calamitous uncertainty,” marked by people overwhelmed by “depression and bewilderment of crippling fear, which like a nagging hound of hell, pursues our every footstep.” Yet King didn’t tell them to ignore their fear. He offered solutions — ways
to face and harness it. His lessons on fear remain ever relevant.j
In this talk, drawing on the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr., as well as contemporary philosophy and psychology, Myisha Cherry will explore ways to harness our fears so that we can survive and thrive in difficult times, instead of being consumed or overwhelmed by them.
Note: The 2026 MLK Day schedule is preliminary and subject to change and updates.
Sunday, January 18
7-8pm | “On the High Plane of Dignity”: Interfaith Reflections on Human Dignity
Join leaders and scholars from Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity as they reflect on two vital questions: 1) What are the sources of human dignity within your tradition, and 2) how are the sources of human dignity reflected in the practices of your tradition? Music and a reflective (and easy) arts practice will round out the evening.
Sponsor: Multifaith Chaplaincy
Location: Gomes Chapel
Monday, January 19
9 – 10:30am | The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Keynote
Student Welcome
Angelica Paniagua ’28
President’s Welcome
Garry W. Jenkins, President, Bates College
Introduction of Keynote Speaker
Susan Stark, Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Planning Committee
Keynote Address: What Do We Do with All This Fear? Lessons from Martin Luther King Jr. on Fear and Courage
Myisha Cherry, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside
Closing
James Reese, Associate Dean of International Student Programs, Member of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Planning Committee
Location: Gomes Chapel | Reserve your ticket here
11am-1:30pm
Dream Big with the Bobcats
Bates student-athletes will host a community day for local youth. The event will include a brief discussion about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and reading, coloring, and other activities, including an optional fun run/walk/roll.
Presenters: Stacey Bunting, director of athletics; Adrienne Shibles, associate athletic director; Erica Rand, professor of art and visual culture and gender and sexuality studies; student-athletes
Sponsors: Department of Athletics and Physical Education; Athletics Equity and Inclusion Council; Harward Center for Community Partnerships; Faculty Committee on Athletics; Student Athlete Advisory Committee; Bates Athletics of Color Coalition
Location: Merrill Field House | Reserve your ticket here
10:45am-12:05pm | Workshops: Session I
Diving Deeper into Rage and Forgiveness/Book Signing and Books for Purchase
Presenters will distribute Myisha Cherry’s book to participants in a winter semester reading group on The Case for Rage: Why Anger is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle. Cherry will be present and available to sign copies of her book. Three of her books will be available for purchase (The Case for Rage; Unmuted: Conversations on Prejudice, Oppression, and Social Justice; and Failures of Forgiveness: What We Get Wrong and How to Do Better).
Presenters: Leana Amaez, vice president for equity and inclusion, Bates College; Tonya Bailey, associate dean and director, Student Center for Belonging and Community; Marcelle Medford, associate professor of sociology
Sponsors: Office of Equity and Inclusion, Student Center for Belonging and Community
Location: Fireplace Lounge | Reserve your ticket here
From Baldwin to Beyoncé: A Complicated American Love
This workshop puts Beyoncé in conversation with James Baldwin as Black artists and creators who explore their relationship to and identification with America. Participants and facilitators will examine media from Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour where the artist reckons with popular imagery and conceptualizations of “country music” and engage with an essay from Baldwin’s body of work reflecting his experiences as a queer, Black expatriate. Through reflection and conversation, we explore the roles of our love and anger in the struggle for justice.
Presenters: Danny Chin, director of alumni and parent equity and inclusion programs and Nate Menifield, equity and inclusion program manager
Sponsors: Advancement, the Office of Equity and Inclusion
Location: Pettengill G21 | Reserve your ticket here
Say His Name: Disgust, Abjection, and the Moral Work of Black Horror
“Say his name” is Candyman’s haunting refrain and a demand to witness, to name, and to refuse erasure. This session explores how Black horror films like Ganja & Hess (1973) and Candyman (2021) use abjection (the visceral breakdown of violated bodies and transgressed boundaries) to expose systemic injustice. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection and Myisha Cherry’s work on anger, we reflect on how disgust can function as a form of moral knowledge, allowing our bodies to register injustice before our minds can rationalize it away. We then explore how Black horror films intentionally use emotional responses like disgust and anger, often dismissed as negative, to deepen audiences’ ethical awareness. Rooted in Black experience yet resonant beyond it, these films challenge all viewers to feel what injustice does to the body, recognize the truths those feelings reveal, and consider what moral awareness requires of them. In keeping with the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., Black horror compels viewers to bear witness to injustice, confront their potential complicity in systemic oppression, and transform visceral response into ethical reflection and action.
Presenter: Shaula Schneik Edwards, grant manager, RIOS Institute
Location: Pettengill G65 | Reserve your ticket here
From Silencing to Empowerment: Exploring Anger, Justice, and Post-traumatic Growth among Refugee Women and Women of Color
This workshop explores how anger — often silenced, stigmatized, or misinterpreted in the lives of refugee women and women of color — can become a transformative force for healing and justice. Many who experience trauma, violence, and displacement learn to suppress emotional expression to survive, protect others, or conform to systems that reward quiet endurance. Yet unacknowledged anger often becomes internalized as shame or self-blame. From Silencing to Empowerment reframes anger as a powerful signal of violated dignity and a catalyst for post-traumatic growth and collective empowerment.
Guided by the Ka Bogso (“Be Healed”) trauma-healing framework — co-developed by Lewiston-based refugee community leader Fowsia Musse and Bates Assistant Professor of Psychology Yun Garrison — this workshop integrates the 5Rs of healing within the post-traumatic growth model to chart a path from pain to purpose: (a) Running (recognizing self-silencing as a survival strategy), (b) Resettlement (noticing how anger can show up in different forms, such as anxiety, fear, or uncertainty when safety and belonging feel disrupted), (c) Residual Stagnation (identifying the invisible burdens of suppressed emotion), (d) Reconciliation (allowing anger to meet compassion and community validation), and (e) Resolution (transforming emotional pain into agency, justice, and renewed connection).
Through storytelling, art-based reflection, and small-group dialogue, participants will explore how anger can coexist with compassion and vision, moving from silence and isolation to voice and community. Ultimately, From Silencing to Empowerment bridges the Ka Bogso 5Rs and the theme of Love, Anger, and the Struggle for Justice, honoring anger not as destructive, but as a source of connection and transformation. This force illuminates pathways toward voice and healing for individuals and communities.
Presenters: Yun Garrison, assistant professor of psychology; Fowsia Musse, Maine Community Integration
Sponsor: Department of Psychology
Location: Commons 221/222 | Reserve your ticket here
Reel Talks 1: Love, Anger, and The Struggle for Justice: Sinners
This panel considers Ryan Coogler’s genre-defying 2025 film, Sinners. Panelists and attendees will reflect together on the film’s complex study of racial, sexual, and colonial boundaries, and the nation’s legacies of intergenerational trauma and collective resistance.
Panelists: Rebecca Herzig, Charles A. Dana Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies; Charles Nero, Benjamin E. Mays ’20 Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies; Stephanie Kelley-Romano, professor of rhetoric, film, and screen studies; Dale Chapman, professor of music; Matthew Fox ’26; Bella Saul ’26; Aidan Stark-Chessa ’26; Braedon Parker ’27
Sponsors: Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies; Department of Rhetoric, Film and Screen Studies; Department of Music
Location: Memorial Commons | Reserve your ticket here
Loving Your “Enemies”: A Solidarity Workshop for Allies
It is increasingly difficult for immigrants and transgender Americans to live openly and safely. 2025 saw federal changes to passport and health care access, while at the state level, 1,011 anti-trans bills were introduced in 49 states. These bills range from blocking trans access to basic healthcare, education, legal recognition, and the right to publicly exist.
In cities across the U.S., federal officials are turning to militaristic, violent tactics to carry out immigration enforcement. Students are abducted in broad daylight, families and children are separated, and even U.S. citizens swept up are held without due process.
These two distinctive narratives converged in November 2025, as families opening the USDA website to check on SNAP status were met with a partisan message blaming Democrats, immigrants, and transgender people for the government shutdown. In an era where trans and immigrant visibility is no longer safe, and public political discourse has ventured into shame and othering, we invite allies into conversation about what solidarity and bridge-building mean as community practices. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Loving Your Enemies” sermon provides some helpful points as we navigate challenges and opportunities for allyship.
In this political moment, we invite participants to reflect on allyship as a community responsibility. It means navigating our complex lived experiences, identities, and narratives in this polarizing moment. Allyship shows up in many ways, but we’re not typically afforded the time or space to process what it means to show up in the moment. This workshop will look at allyship as a spectrum, and participants will be invited to engage in small group discussions examining different forms of allyship based on context or situation. Feel free to bring your own reflections on the times where you’ve shown up as an ally, missed opportunities to demonstrate allyship, and ways in which your allyship did not land as intended.
Presenters: Jenna Dela Cruz Vendil ’06, associate director of democratic engagement and student activism, Harward Center; Anthony Del Real, assistant director of LGBTQ+ programs, Student Center for Belonging and Community
Sponsors: Harward Center for Community Partnerships; Student Center for Belonging and Community
Location: Pettengil G52 | Reserve your ticket here
Art Venn Diagram: The Overlapping of Love, Anger, and Justice Through an Art Therapy Approach
Using writing and art collage materials to explore each theme of Love, Anger, and Justice individually to discover how they overlap in our lived experiences, this workshop may offer a form of self-reflection that can be harnessed for healing oneself and others.
Presenters: Jamie Silvestri, program director/art therapist with ArtVan; Sam D’Onofrio, expressive art assistant with ArtVan
Location: Dana 204 | Reserve your ticket here
Student Empowerment: CAREing for the our Rural High School
The Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School Culture, Awareness, Respect and Education Team (CARE) is a student-led organization that brings awareness to issues regarding equity and inclusion within the school building. Students facilitate professional development with staff to encourage growth and provide tools for addressing bias, and the CARE Team also hosts an annual Respect Day for staff and students. In this panel, students will share their experiences discussing challenging topics within a rural school setting and will provide insight to empower others to replicate similar programs in rural schools.
Presenters: Paul Bickford, Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School principal, and Travis Palmer, OHCHS social studies teacher, civil rights team co-advisor, National Honor Society co-advisor, and CARE advisor
Location: Dana 219 | Reserve your ticket here
Who’s up for Something Wrenching and Unending? Reckoning with Maine’s Role in Global Slavery and the Emotional Resistance that Historical Recovery Work Provokes
For the past seven years, Atlantic Black Box co-founders Meadow Dibble and Kate McMahon have collaborated with community partners to surface historical truths about Maine’s entanglement in the slave trade and the global economy of enslavement — truths long excluded from local narratives and suppressed in collective memory. Along the way, they have encountered a wide spectrum of reactions that reveal just how fraught and emotionally charged the work of historical recovery can be. Drawing on Myisha Cherry’s scholarship on the role of emotions in moral and public life, this interactive workshop invites participants to explore common forms of resistance that arise here in Maine as communities confront suppressed histories, including denial, deflection, indifference, minimizing, and rationalization. With guidance from co-facilitators Lauress Lawrence and Adilah Muhammad, we will reflect on what these emotional responses signal about the deeper work of repair, accountability, and transformation ahead of us, and we’ll discuss how to engage this process with integrity and care.
Participants will leave with a foundational understanding of Maine’s entanglements with slavery, a clearer grasp of how regional myths were fashioned and perpetuated, and familiarity with emergent strategies and innovative approaches to historical recovery. They will also receive a practical take-home toolkit, including a curated folder of readings, links to ABB’s Maine Slaving Voyages map, a list of online resources, and a fact sheet featuring key statistics and selected primary source materials.
“America is an old house. We can never declare the work over. Wind, flood, drought, and human upheavals batter a structure that is already fighting whatever flaws were left unattended in the original foundation. When you live in an old house, you may not want to go into the basement after a storm to see what the rains have wrought. Choose not to look, however, at your own peril. The owner of an old house knows that whatever you are ignoring will never go away. Whatever is lurking will fester whether you choose to look or not. Ignorance is no protection from the consequences of inaction. Whatever you are wishing away will gnaw at you until you gather the courage to face what you would rather not see.” — Isabel Wilkerson
Presenters: Lauress Lawrence, a community and equity learning partner with the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation; Meadow Dibble, founding executive director of Atlantic Black Box; Kate McMahon, executive director of Castine Historical Society; Adilah Muhammad, founding executive director of The Third Place
Location: Chase Lounge | Reserve your ticket here
1:30pm–2:50pm | Workshops: Session II
Womanism, Restorative Practices, and Healing through Community
The Restorative Practices Advisors present a student-led workshop and subsequent restorative justice circle centered around the values of Womanism, in alignment with Myisha Cherry’s article “Black Feminism is For Everyone.” Beginning with a mindfulness exercise, the RPAs will guide the room through a discussion of the four tenets of Womanism as they relate to Cherry’s work on Black Feminism, and transition into an opening exercise, which will prepare participants for the culminating activity, a community-building restorative justice circle practice. Prompts in the exercise and the circle will draw on this year’s theme in connection with restorative practices.
Presenters: John Campana ’26; James Foleno ’28; Evangeline Kpetsey ’28
Sponsor: Bates Restorative Practice Advisors
Location: Pettengill G21 | Reserve your ticket here
Martin: The MARTIN BELL, A Commemoration In Form, Sound, & Action
Bill Jeter ’76 has been making socially-conscious art in Minneapolis for most of his career. Circa 2013, he created a multimedia piece intended to evoke the ideals of Martin Luther King Jr. Its most prominent feature is a hand-cast bell that has been ceremonially rung at college campuses, exhibitions and the like, including a recent George Floyd remembrance; the supporting structure is also wonderfully symbolic — arched church windows over barred jail cells.
Presenter: William Jeter Jr. ’76, Minneapolis-based artist, educator, and civil responder
Location: TBD
Being Black in Hitler’s Germany: Film & Conversation
Hans Massaquoi grew up Black in Nazi Germany and escaped to the U.S., later working alongside Muhammad Ali during the Civil Rights era. The film explores his childhood friendship with Ralph Giordano, a Jewish boy who survived the Holocaust, and their reunion years later, by which time both had gone on to remarkable careers, Massaquoi as a leading journalist and Giordano as a renowned writer and publicist. Join us for the documentary screening and a live virtual Q&A with filmmaker John Kantara.
Presenters: Temitope Noah, visiting assistant professor of Africana; John A. Kantara, Schwarze Filmschaffende in Deutschland
Sponsor: Program in Africana
Location: Pettengill G65 | Reserve your ticket here
Creating Refuge: Community Building Through Creative Practice
In an era when contemporary politics feels stuck, when the very institutions entrusted to provide safety and care are the site of othering instead of belonging, or when we live in an increasingly digital era where it becomes easier to be exhausted by the mental load of caring than it is to care at all, how can we move beyond conventional actions that continue to fail us, and adapt to new ways of leading anchored in kinship, reciprocity, and generosity that emphasizes not just doing, but a state of being?
Over a year ago, staff from the Community Engagement Centers of Bates, Bowdoin, Carleton and Macalester Colleges began a conversation about what it takes to sustain deep civic participation during times of unrest, not just for our students, but also ourselves. This conversation continued as the Creating Refuge Collaboratory, formed and supported by Imagining America.
This workshop is an invitation to engage in the idea of what it means to be “creating refuge” through civic and community-engaged practice, finding new ways of being connected, and adapting our work during these complicated times. In this workshop, we will explore a dimension of creative practice and activism through zine-making. Workshop participants will engage with the rich counterculture history of zines, create their own, and gain access to Know Your Rights information along with campus and community resources.
Presenters: Jenna Dela Cruz Vendil ’06, associate director of democratic engagement and student activism, Harward Center
Sponsor: Harward Center for Community Partnerships
Location: Dana 204 | Reserve your ticket here
Language, Love, and Righteous Anger: Continuing the Struggle for Linguistic Justice
This workshop examines the intersection of language, identity, and the MLK Day theme. We explore the love of one’s cultural and linguistic heritage, the righteous anger that can come from its suppression, and the struggle for justice required to make it visible and valued. Through the SPELL (Short-term Peer-led Enrichment Language Lessons) model, multilingual Bates College students will lead breakout language sessions. We will then facilitate a discussion on how affirming linguistic diversity is a powerful tool for building an anti-racist community and honoring the full humanity of every member, a core tenet of Martin Luther King Jr.’s work. Participants will connect their own language experiences to Dr. King’s visions about equality and belonging.
Presenters: Keiko Konoeda, lecturer in Japanese; Shafin Jubayer ’28, Dinara Kuatov ’28; Jamie Shelton ’27
Location: Commons 221/222 (break out rooms in Commons 211, 221/222, and 226) | Reserve your ticket here
Emoting for Social Change and Community Building
This session will explore using our feelings about social injustice as the catalyst for building community and movement work, in addition to creating joyful liberation that gets us grounded in our community to work toward long term change. This session is a mixture of lectures via personal storytelling, small group/breakout sessions, and the group creation of concrete actions that can be taken immediately to start building a localized movement community.
Presenter: Shay Stewart-Bouley, creator of Black Girl in Maine Media
Location: Memorial Commons | Reserve your ticket here
Reel Talks 2: Race, Buddhism, and Sexuality in The White Lotus, Thailand Season 3
This panel examines Mike White’s 2025 controversial HBO series The White Lotus Season 3 set in Thailand. Panelists and attendees will reflect together on the series’ use of Buddhism as it relates to love, anger, and the struggle for justice. The panelists are especially attentive to race and sexuality in the show.
Panelists: Charles Nero, Benjamin E. Mays ’20 Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies; Alison Melnick Dyer, associate professor of religious studies; Shay Campolongo ’26; Matt Riseman ’26
Sponsors: Department of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies; Department of Religious Studies
Location: Chase Lounge | Reserve your ticket here
1:30pm–4:25pm | Workshops: Sessions II & III
Drop by and Make a Screen Print!
Participants could drop in and create a “Love, Anger, and the Struggle for Justice” themed screen-printed item using materials that we provide. Images for printing will be connected to the theme and are being created by art and visual culture senior thesis students. We will have T-shirts, tote bags, and other items available for participants to take. Participants can also bring their own materials.
Presenters: Cat Balco, professor of art and visual culture; Michel Droge, visiting assistant professor of art and visual culture; art and visual culture students
Sponsor: Department of Art and Visual Culture
Location: Olin Lobby | Reserve your ticket here
There is Another Way: Film and Conversation
Combatants for Peace is a movement of Israeli ex-soldiers and former Palestinian freedom fighters working for peace and reconciliation. Despite the ongoing violence and division, this group of visionaries refuses to surrender to violence and injustice and in doing so show us that another way is possible. The film, There is Another Way, explores their personal and collective struggle. After the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent Israeli military reaction, their mission is under more pressure than ever. Director Stephen Apkon highlights the courage it takes to choose reconciliation, even in the face of fear and despair. In a world plagued by conflict, the film poses a pressing question: Will we choose collective liberation, where the needs, rights and safety of all are prioritized — in which our shared humanity comes first — knowing that no one is free until everyone is free? To explore this question, following the film, a facilitator will lead a discussion in a safe space that honors different points of view and experiences.
Presenter: Bonnie Shulman, professor emerita of mathematics at Bates
Location: Pettengill G52 | Reserve your ticket here
I’m Still Here: Film and Conversation
A woman married to a former politician during the military dictatorship in Brazil is forced to reinvent herself and chart a new course for her family after a violent and arbitrary act.
A film conversation will take place after the screening.
Presenter: Stephanie Pridgeon, associate professor of Hispanic studies
Location: Dana 219 | Reserve your ticket here
3:05pm–4:25pm | Workshops: Session III
Book Discussion: Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger by Lama Rod Owens
In this seminar-style conversation, we will read and discuss Lama Rod Owens’ Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger. Owens is a southern, Black, queer, Tibetan Buddhist teacher who also incorporates spiritual traditions from his upbringing to inform his understanding of liberation. In this highly accessible book, he discusses the challenges we face when we encounter strong emotions on our spiritual journeys and the ways these emotions can be used to support the path to liberation. Through a Buddhist lens, his work questions the (mis)understandings of how love and rage can impact spiritual practice, and the importance of understanding the source of these feelings. He queries how we balance the spiritual and religious practices that improve our lives, with the notion that true “liberation” can only be achieved once all are free. How can strong emotions be liberatory when they are approached as a catalyst for change? Our hope is that this innovative and timely book will spark a conversation about how difficult emotions influence our spiritual lives, our religious identities, and our social action. Books will be distributed to interested parties ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Please sign up at the ticket link below.
Presenters: Alison Melnick Dyer, associate professor of religious studies; Cynthia Baker, professor of religious studies; Halla Attallah, assistant professor of religious studies; Anderson Moss-Weaver, assistant professor of religious studies
Sponsor: Department of Religious Studies
Location: Pettengill G10 | Reserve your ticket here
BONDing Time: Engaging in Community Conversation
The Bates Open Network on Dialogue (BOND) is a new semesterly initiative designed by the Office of Equity and Inclusion to cultivate regular opportunities for all members of our campus community to engage in meaningful dialogue covering a wide range of topics. During this session, participants will engage in facilitated, small-group conversations that will explore the broad themes and questions that emerge from Myisha Cherry’s morning keynote address. The session will be structured to follow BOND’s three-step educational model — (1) inform, (2) model, (3) engage — and participants will leave with a deeper understanding of the tenets of effective dialogue, the BOND process, and the keynote’s content.
Presenter: Nate Menifield, Bates equity and inclusion program manager
Sponsor: Office of Equity and Inclusion
Location: Commons 221/222 | Reserve your ticket here
Looking for Light in Political Darkness
2025 ushered in a new political era, rapidly changing the role and function of the U.S. government, its impacts rippling across public and private institutions touching nearly all facets of public life. What lessons can we take away from the 2025 elections in cultivating political alternatives at the local and state levels? How has the government shutdown changed attitudes about how the Federal government cares for its most vulnerable? Join us for an engaging conversation with diverse political thought-leaders to process the past year of national and state politics and what it means for 2026 in Maine.
Presenters: Jenna Dela Cruz Vendil ’06, associate director of democratic engagement and student activism with the Harward Center; Destie Hohman Sprague, executive director, Maine Women’s Lobby and Maine Women’s Policy Center; Jan Kosinski, government relations director of the Maine Education Association; Shay Stewart-Bouley, creator of Black Girl in Maine Media
Sponsor: Harward Center for Community Partnerships
Location: Pettengill G65 | Reserve your ticket here
Searching for Solid Ground
A workshop/performance that highlights songs and stories of civil rights and the struggle to balance the emotional landscape of our national journey, from slavery to freedom. This includes aspects of Reggie Harris’ personal story as a descendant of both the enslaved and the enslaver (as the great grandson of an enslaved woman Bibhanna Hewlett and her master, Confederate General Williams Carter Wickham).
Presenter: Reggie Harris, songwriter, storyteller, and lecturer
Location: Olin 104 | Reserve your ticket here
4:45pm
The Rev. Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays Debate
Presented by students from Morehouse and Bates colleges, this debate honors the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Mays, a 1920 Bates graduate, prominent debater, longtime Morehouse president, pioneer of the civil rights movement, and important mentor to Martin Luther King Jr..
This year’s topic is “Resolved: This house believes that social justice movements should practice a politics of anger.”
Dr. King offered a complicated assessment of anger’s place in our struggle for social change. Dr. King once cautioned in his speech titled “The Other America” that “angered expressions” of despair could produce “bitterness in the violent rebellions” of civil rights activists. Yet, Dr. King also recognized anger’s positive potential in his 1968 commemoration of W.E.B. Du Bois, expressing that “the supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.”
Location: Olin Arts Center Concert Hall | Reserve your ticket here
7:30 pm
Evening Performances
A montage of presentations and music addressing the Martin Luther King Jr. Day theme, legacy, and aims of social justice.
Location: Olin Arts Center Concert Hall | Reserve your ticket here