MLK Week to Celebrate Life, Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

On Jan. 20, 2025, the United States will observe Martin Luther King Day, a national holiday to celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., a prominent leader in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s in the United States. 

At NC State, the date kicks off a week-long celebration of King’s work, as Multicultural Student Affairs (MSA) will host “MLK Campus Commemoration 2025,” a series of events designed to engage with and educate the campus community about King’s life and legacy. 

The theme for this year’s MLK Campus Commemoration is “Bridging Generations: Lighting the Way and Illuminating the Future.” MSA Director Jameco McKenzie explained that this theme “honors Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy in a way that reflects NC State’s values of learning, connection and shared purpose.”

The week will start Tuesday, Jan. 21 with an intergenerational keynote and meet-and-greet session at Talley Student Union to discuss this year’s theme. The keynote will feature students and faculty from the NC State community including Caston Reaves II, Jaida Ellis, Dasan Ahanu, Maru Gonzalez and Roshaunda Breeden. The keynote conversation will be facilitated by Jayla Moody Marshall, doctoral candidate in the Higher Education, Opportunity and Justice track in the College of Education. 

Jan. 22 will feature two events: an art workshop hosted by the Arts Village, and an immersive screening of one of King’s speeches in Durham in Hunt Library’s The Landing. The later event will highlight the important role North Carolina played in King’s movement. 

“We want to make this a week of education and learning,” McKenzie said. “Not a lot of people know that MLK previously came to Durham much less to our campus. “We’re helping people see that King’s work happened everywhere, both nationally and regionally, but also local to our community. So we’re trying to bring it to students and people at NC State, to know that this is something important to us and happened in our area.” 

The week will conclude Friday, Jan. 24 with a student led march, March Like Martin. The demonstrative march will start at Stafford Commons and conclude at Harris Field. Student leader Jaida Ellis will speak about King’s legacy and what it means to her and the community in modern times. Community members will join the African American Cultural Center (AACC) in the Sankofa room with a performance from Matthew Whitaker, who scored the film Starkeisha. Free tickets to Whitaker’s performance are available to attendees. Arts NC State and the Gregg Museum of Art and Design will assist with the creation of signs for the march. 

Following the march event, MSA and AACC AYA Ambassadors will lead a Campus Community Conversation on how to balance leadership and personal wellness. The talk will occur in the AACC living room in Witherspoon Student Center. 

MSA is collaborating with several campus partners to host this week of events, including Arts NC State, the African American Cultural Center, Black Alumni Society, Division of Academic and Student Affairs Assessment, Fraternity and Sorority Life, New Student Programs, Student Success, University Housing, University Communications and Marketing, College of Engineering and University Libraries.

“I think it’s both an awesome responsibility and an opportunity to engage with folks,” McKenzie said. “While MSA leads in putting this on, we are in partnership with so many folks across the Division of Academic and Student Affairs and the university in the different colleges. So being in partnership with different people,offices and units has been a great experience. Seeing it come to fruition is a great feeling and I’m excited to see the impact of this week.”

The MLK Campus Commemoration is a chance for the campus community to learn about King’s important work and ongoing legacy in an interactive, engaging manner. 

“I think it’s so important to learn about King and play a part in educating folks,” McKenzie said. “I believe learning happens both within and outside of the classroom. So while we have lots of classes that talk about the themes of what King has done and, how that has reverberated throughout the campus communities and United States, I think being able to experience it outside of the classroom with folks you may not be familiar with provides a different way of connecting to the work in a way that helps folks learn at different levels and find their own connection to King’s message of connection, community and having a shared purpose.”