This year’s theme for the celebration is “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood,” words Martin Luther King Jr. shared during this 1963 I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The 38th Annual MLK Day of Celebration will feature special guest Fred Gray, a preacher, activist, and civil rights attorney who has represented Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin, and plaintiffs in the Tuskegee experiment lawsuit. He worked with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, filing the lawsuit that led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision condemning segregated seating on buses. Gray’s leadership and legal counsel led Martin Luther King to describe him as “chief counsel for the protest movement.” In 1970, Gray was one of the first two African American officials elected to the Alabama State Legislature since reconstruction. In 2022, President Joe Biden presented Gray with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor acknowledging “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commission of Mid-Michigan recently received an Emmy Award for the broadcast of the 2021 MLK Day of Celebration honoring Dr. King’s legacy. The award is for excellence in broadcast production in the historical/cultural category from the Michigan Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Please click here for additional details about the celebration.