Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2023 – News

Picture story: ‘You are the bringer of light and change’

Phyllis Graber Jensen — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 21:18:54 +0000

Immerse yourself in the creative hope and beauty of Martin Luther King Jr. Day through �ֲ��ý photography and video.

Video: ‘Whatever wilderness you wander, you are all creatives’

�ֲ��ý News — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 18:43:13 +0000

“Know that you are, by nature, a creator, a maker of something other than what is. In whatever wilderness you wander, you are all creatives.”

Keith Hamilton Cobbs, an actor, playwright, and �ֲ��ý’ keynote speaker for Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2023, began the day in the Peter J. Gomes Chapel with an inspiring message about how arts and activism play complementing roles in our lives, no matter who we are, or what we do.

Watch some of the best moments of the day below:

Throughout the day, workshops, panels, discussions, and creative presentations followed this year’s theme, “Art and Activism,” as the �ֲ��ý community shared how they practice creativity and community in their lives.

�ֲ��ý debater Manuel Machorro ’25 (left) of Mexico City and visiting Morehouse College debater Chijindum Dike teamed up for the annual Benjamin Elijah Mays Debate on MLK Day at �ֲ��ý. They debated �ֲ��ý’ Andrew Montieth ’24 of Monroe, Wash., and John Curry of Morehouse. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

‘Say yes’: MLK keynote address at �ֲ��ý College

Freddie Wright — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 16:48:25 +0000

Keith Hamilton Cobb, an actor and playwright who delivered the keynote address for �ֲ��ý’ 2023 Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance on Monday, offered his audience one big takeaway: “Say ‘yes.’”

Saying “yes,” Cobb explained to the big gathering that filled Gomes Chapel, is to answer the question posed by the “voice of authority within” us — the voice that asks us to step forward and be present “wherever you are wanted.”

In other words, Cobb said, “your ‘yes’ is your way of speaking your purpose into existence.”

View the full Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote gathering in Gomes Chapel on Jan. 16, 2023.

Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. each responded to the calling, Cobb said, as have Greta Thunberg, X González, and David Hogg, “all hearing the voice of authority from within and being irresistibly compelled, perhaps with reluctance but ultimately with conviction, to honor it, come what might.”

The first MLK Day keynote held in Gomes Chapel since 2018 (the historic chapel having been closed for renovations prior to the pandemic) opened with a student welcome from Sam Jean-Francois ’23, an Africana major from Medford, Mass., who placed this year’s theme, “Art and Activism,” into compelling and uplifting context.

Sam Jean-Francois ’23, an Africana major from Medford, Mass., placed this year’s theme, “Art and Activism,” into compelling and uplifting context during the student welcome to this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote gathering in Gomes Chapel on Jan. 16. 2023. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“Black activism is innately beautiful, resting on the demand for humanity, the love for our differences, and the act of reconstituting life in the world that deems Black people dead at birth. Reflecting on this year of grief, loss, and radical resistance, we can think of no other way to enter this year’s discourse on racial justice than at the intersection of arts and activism.

“Activism is about community building, uplifting voices and radical love, and I invite all of you to build community with me today.”

President Clayton Spencer offered her welcome, noting how, on a Monday featuring rain, sleet, and snow, the day is both a time “for sensible footwear and for us to come together to embrace and extend the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

“Art lives on the frontier of social norms and it refuses to embrace the status quo,” said President Clayton Spencer as she welcomed the Martin Luther King Jr. Day audience in Gomes Chapel on Jan. 16. 2023. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Referring to an essay by Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, Spencer explained that “art lives on the frontier of social norms and it refuses to embrace the status quo. And so doing it broadens our experience, expands our field of vision and deepens our understanding.”

Tyler Harper, an assistant professor of environmental studies and co-chair of the college’s MLK Day Planning Committee, introduced Cobb and quoted from “The Purpose of Education,” an essay King wrote as a student at Morehouse College and .

This year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2023 keynote gathering, held in Gomes Chapel for the first time since 2018, drew a capacity crowd on Jan. 16, 2023. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

King wrote that higher education has two purposes: to teach skills and to instill good character. “Education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society,” King wrote. Education “should teach students not just how the world is, but invite them to consider how the world ought to be.”

“This, for King, is the role of culture and of the arts,” said Harper, adding that Cobb is “a man who has devoted his life to education of the sort imagined by Dr. King, an education that recognizes the transformative power of art and activism and of art as activism.”

Tyler Harper (center), an assistant professor of environmental studies and co-chair of the college’s MLK Day Planning Committee, introduced Keith Hamilton Cobb (right) at Monday’s keynote gathering in Gomes Chapel. At left is President Clayton Spencer. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

An actor with numerous television and film credits since the mid-1990s, Cobb gained new acclaim in 2019 for his award-winning off-Broadway play, American Moor, which explores the perspective of the African American male through the metaphor of Shakespeare’s Othello.

In addition to his keynote, Cobb hosted a screening of American Moor later in the day, as well as a discussion of the play and a panel discussion, “Reconsidering Othello,” in mid-afternoon, among some two dozen different creating offerings during this year’s two-day observance.

Cobb began his keynote by broadening the definition of art. “When we say ‘art,’ what we are actually talking about is creativity,” he said, the “innate ability to think and innovate with an open heart.”

Open-hearted creativity, Cobb said, allows us to unshackle ourselves from the constraints of a capitalist society, “the miasma of living our prescribed American lives, ever more manipulated by digital technologies and the consolidation of power and wealth into the hands of an ever-shrinking few,” unable to “know who we are and why we are here.”

Each human being is “by nature a creative, a maker of something other than what is,” Cobb said. And whatever field a �ֲ��ý student pursues, “whatever wilderness you wander, you are all creatives and not the least of what is being created in your wandering is you.”

Audience members clap during the keynote address by Keith Hamilton Cobb during the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance in Gomes Chapel on Jan. 16. 2023. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

And activism? “When you begin to think and innovate beyond the capitalist structures in America, one morning waking up to the idea that there might be a way to apply your tools to a more socially conscious, more human-centric future, you are, at once, an activist.”

A student listens to the Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2023 keynote speaker, Keith Hamilton Cobb, in Gomes Chapel on Jan. 16. 2023. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Saying “no” and being complacent is not an option, Cobb said. “Nothing but more of what this is that we are living already comes of your silence, your complacence, your doubting of your own intellectual agency, your stifled creativity. Nothing comes of your playing small.

“This that we’re living in is purgatory, neither heaven nor hell. It is designed to be just comfortable enough for you to forget that you don’t like it. That is its very definition and its inherent danger. Here is where unexceptional societies go to die.”

As he headed into the home stretch of his address, Cobb spoke directly to his �ֲ��ý listeners, his voice rising as he sought to drive home both his message and his hope,

“Speak your whole truth with all your voice,” said Keith Hamilton Cobb to his audience in Gomes Chapel on Jan. 16. 2023. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“Your activism, however you effect it, is an example of responsibility to something greater than yourself,” he said. “You serve the world by cultivating tools of creativity that you apply in the process of becoming more wholly you…by saying ‘yes’ to the totality of you, the divine idea.

“Let your divinity infuse everything that you write, that you paint, sculpt, sing, dance, design, concoct, produce. Let it inspire everything that you say and every interaction that you engage — and give no one a pass. Speak your whole truth with all your voice.

“Emerge from the wilderness and deliver your epistles irrespective of who is ready to hear them. You are the bringer of light and change, not the jackass whisperer.

Keynote speaker Keith Hamilton Cobb reacts to a round of applause following his address in Gomes Chapel on Jan. 16. 2023. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“I would posit that we all suffer together at this moment, in a purgatory wrought by our equally flawed human tools. This is life, the Buddhists would say. I don’t disagree. But too many have made their lives about the avoidance of discomfort rather than saying ‘yes’ to the life’s purpose that is revealed to them.

“Art is the self-creation of you. Activism is your forever resisting the belief that that creation is ever completed.”

“Say, ‘yes.’”

‘Art & Activism’: The story behind this year’s two MLK Day posters

Freddie Wright — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 16:49:20 +0000

Art and activism, the theme of this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance at �ֲ��ý, could be expressed visually in a serious and heavy way.

“But Blackness is much more than that,” says Olivia Orr, a graphic designer in the �ֲ��ý Communications Office who designed two distinctive posters for this year’s observance. “Blackness is beautiful, it’s bright. And the history of MLK is beautiful. We can celebrate — we’re allowed to be joyful and artistic and expressive.”

Evoking all three elements, the poster designs are now displayed everywhere on campus, from the historic “Mouthpiece” outside Hathorn to the many widescreen monitors within �ֲ��ý buildings. One poster is black and white, featuring a slew of uplifting quotes about the power of art and activism, rendered in different fonts to suggest different voices.

The quotes, such as “Artists are the gatekeepers of truth” and “No one can silence me in this,” are all attributed to an iconic 20th-century figure who embodied the intersection of art and activism: Paul Robeson, an actor, athlete, singer, and activist, and one of the most important voices in the Harlem Renaissance.

The second poster is bold and colorful: magenta, yellow, and white. The text is minimal, just “art & activism.” The word “art” is rendered two ways, rightside up and upside down. The meaning? “It’s just art,” says Orr.

Both sides now: The venerable Class of 1927 “Mouthpiece” outside Hathorn Hall displays this year’s two Martin Luther King Jr. Day posters, one on each side. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

During a meeting of a subcommittee of the MLK Day Planning Committee, the group talked about their ideas for this year’s poster. Committee member Phyllis Graber Jensen, director of photography and video for the �ֲ��ý Communications Office, web page featuring quotes from Robeson, who was in 1999.

Graber Jensen suggested that his voice and story might inform a poster design. For designer Olivia Orr, Robeson’s was a new name, but after doing more digging, she was captivated by his story and his words. “He was radical and anti-colonial. And he spoke the truth of that publicly.”

Robeson was blacklisted in the 1950s, his passport taken away. He was unable to work for eight years, until a Supreme Court ruling forced the government to reinstate it. “I have to imagine that in some ways, it made his voice stronger,” Orr says, “because of the way it brought attention to the fact that he was being silenced.”

Paul Robeson, June 1942. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

For Orr, it was refreshing to learn about a radical figure like Robeson . When it comes to the civil rights era, “society tends to focus on the same people again and again and again,” she notes. Society also tends to sanitize their radical ideas, , which makes them feel “not quite so controversial any more” to a contemporary audience — “at least the parts that we talk about are not controversial.”

Orr, who is involved in different activist organizations and efforts in Portland, where she lives, blends art and activism in her own way. Artists, herself included, “can sometimes feel a responsibility to tell the truth with their art and to be honest, like their work comes from a place of honesty.”

The Rev. Brittany Longsdorf, the college’s multifaith chaplain, poses with the 2023 MLK Day posters on Jan. 6, 2023, as she makes her way around campus placing the posters in campus buildings. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“Their art also can speak the truth about the world, about the situation that they’re in, and I view that responsibility as a heavy weight that artists carry. They’re telling the truth and being honest and they have a chance to show a larger audience their work.”

Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2023 at �ֲ��ý: Creative offerings explore ‘Art and Activism’

Jay Burns — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 19:34:25 +0000

A generous menu of creative events — all offered in person and open to the public — awaits attendees at this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance at �ֲ��ý.

Celebrating “Art and Activism,” MLK Day 2023 offers 24 different presentations over two days, Jan. 15 and 16. The observance is bookended by a documentary screening, taking place Sunday afternoon, that features a �ֲ��ý alumnus who leads young men in Chicago toward healing spaces, and by the crowd-pleasing, student-produced Sankofa performance Monday evening.

The Keynote

The centerpiece of the two-day observance is Monday morning’s keynote address in historic Gomes Chapel by actor and playwright Keith Hamilton Cobb. President Clayton Spencer and Sam Jean-Francois ’23 of Medford, Mass., a member of the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day Planning Committee, will offer welcoming remarks.

Offering the 2023 MLK Day keynote address at �ֲ��ý College is Keith Hamilton Cobb, an actor and playwright whose award-winning play, American Moor explores the perspective of the African American male through the metaphor of Shakespeare’s Othello. (Photograph by Nina Wurtzel)

An actor who has numerous television and film credits since the mid-1990s, Cobb gained new acclaim in 2019 for his award-winning off-Broadway play, American Moor, which explores the perspective of the African American male through the metaphor of Shakespeare’s Othello.

The play is “about performing Othello but also, in a way, about being Othello,” said a New York Times review — “a black man trying to find a path to excellence in a society anxious to keep him in his place.”

Ticket, Visitor, and Viewing Information

Unless otherwise noted, MLK Day 2023 events at �ֲ��ý College require tickets. Each event listed in the schedule below includes a link to reserve your ticket(s). In addition, , through the �ֲ��ý MLK Day Eventbrite ticket page.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day events at �ֲ��ý are open to the general public. We ask that guests follow the college’s visitor policy.
Video recordings of the keynote (9 a.m. Monday) and the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays Debate (4:45 p.m. Monday) will be published on Tuesday, Jan. 17.

Besides his keynote, Cobb will contribute in myriad ways to this year’s MLK Day audiences. He will lead a screening of American Moor following the keynote, a discussion of the play in the early afternoon, and a panel discussion, “Reconsidering Othello,” in mid-afternoon, joined by collaborators from his Untitled Othello Project and by �ֲ��ý’ resident Shakespeare expert, Katie Adkison, assistant professor of English.

The Theme

In devising the theme for this year’s programming, the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day Planning Committee sought to show the power of art — its limitless capacity for illumination, truth-telling, and compassion — in service of activism.

Art and activism “ask us to consider the ugliness of how the world is as well as the promise of how the world could be.”
Tyler Harper, MLK Day Committee Co-chair

“We live in a society that is increasingly defined by the passive consumption of information, or as we now say, ‘content,’” says committee co-chair and Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Tyler Harper. “Art, when it is great, and activism, when it is effective, draw us out of this passivity.”

Art and activism, he adds, “ask us to consider the ugliness of how the world is as well as the promise of how the world could be. The MLK Committee was united in our desire to use this year’s event to highlight the transformative power of the arts.”

During King’s lifetime, specifically during the 1960s civil rights movement, many artists worked to draw Americans from their passivity, from luminaries like Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone, and Ruby Dee to less-known artists like Frank Cieciorka, whose woodcut rendering of a clenched-fist salute has remained an enduring symbol of protest and activism.

“Dr. King used his own artistry to help us imagine our beloved community living in a better world.”
Justin Moriaty, MLK Day Committee Co-chair

Committee co-chair Justin Moriarty, technical director of theater at �ֲ��ý, points to what writer James Baldwin said about artists, how their job is to help us navigate the “great wilderness” of our minds. As Baldwin wrote, “The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness…to make the world a more human world.”

“I would imagine that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not only familiar with this essay, written six years before his assassination, but inspired by thoughts like this found in the work of the many different artists of his time,” says Moriarty. “Dr. King used his own artistry to help us imagine our beloved community living in a better world.”

The Offerings

This year’s two dozen MLK Day events include screenings, discussions, workshops, readings, and performances — not to mention a session of bread-baking and another treat, the verbal and intellectual acrobatics of the annual Rev. Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays Debate, which brings together student debaters from Morehouse and �ֲ��ý colleges. This year’s motion is: “This house believes that the targeting of iconic works of art to advance social justice is justified.”

Most MLK Day sessions are led by �ֲ��ý students, faculty, or staff; others by Lewiston-Auburn community partners or first-time MLK Day visitors.

On Sunday afternoon, Marshall Hatch ’10 returns to �ֲ��ý for a screening and discussion of the documentary All These Sons, which follows Hatch, who leads the faith-based MAAFA project in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood, and a fellow community leader as they try to “shepherd young men away from Chicago’s gang life,” says reviewer Dwight Brown.

Marshall Hatch Jr. ’10 (right) connects with a young man in Chicago in this publicity still from Joshua Altman and Bing Liu’s documentary film All These Sons.

“On view are consciousness-raising groups, adolescents voting for the first time and churches with stained-glass windows depicting black religious leaders.” Filmmakers Bing Liu and Joshua Altman “capture these precious moments of hope adroitly.”

Sunday evening’s traditional offering is the Martin Luther King Jr. Interfaith Service, featuring readings by �ֲ��ý student poets, songs from local multifaith community members, and a dance message by Assistant Professor of Dance Brian J. Evans.

Following Monday morning’s keynote, various mid-morning sessions include the student-led workshop “Linguistic Justice,” designed to help �ֲ��ý students and others who do community-engaged work better navigate the linguistic diversity in local schools, where nearly three dozen languages are spoken.

Making the grade for this year’s MLK Day offerings is a workshop on “ungrading.” Relatively new to pedagogical theory, “ungrading” means assessing student work with a focus on enhanced learning and close interaction, rather than numbers or letters. “We will share common myths or misconceptions about ungrading and encourage critical reflection on why we grade as we do,” says Lindsay Hamilton ’05, director of the workshop sponsor, the �ֲ��ý Center for Inclusive Teaching and Learning.

Trajectories from French to English are the topic of another morning session, “Translation Rhythms.” It presents short works of creative nonfiction that were written by French-speaking students at the Université Catholique de Bukavu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and translated into English by French and francophone studies students at �ֲ��ý.

The design of this MLK Day 2023 poster features various graphic treatments of quotes attributed to the 20th-century Black artist and activist Paul Robeson, including the quote, “Artists are the gatekeepers of truth.” (Design by Olivia Orr/�ֲ��ý College)

A third morning session, led by dance professor Evans, uses a community-driven arts framework to grapple with the first three words of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution: “We, the people.” The workshop, “Do, Process,” asks this question: “How do ‘we’ confront the implications that arise when one of the foundational documents of the United States of America does not equally protect all of its citizens, let alone those it deems illegal and foreign?”

In the afternoon, the goal of the workshop “A Moment of Rest” is to listen — really listen. An award-winning score of ambient, high-tech spiritual jazz and poetry promises attendees a “sound bath,” in the words of presenter and multidisciplinary artist James Allister Sprang. In turn, deep listening becomes “a radical act meant to consciously bring awareness to the present moment while welcoming our bodies, our ancestors, our traumas, our pain, our longings, visions, and dreams.”

Over at Commons, attendees at a second-floor workshop can get a basic understanding of the various exercises, skills, and games that theater folks use to develop a play and their acting abilities. Presented by Maine Inside Out, the workshop relies on a theoretical approach known as “Theater of the Oppressed,” in which theater’s creative power is both shared and unleashed in service of social justice.

Finally, the Black Student Union’s annual cultural showcase, Sankofa, takes place Monday evening. Sankofa is a decade-long tradition at �ֲ��ý inspired by the Akan word for “return” — embodying remembrance, memory, and community in its use.

The 2020 Sankofa performance, “Invisible Women” telling stories of the perseverance of women of color within the �ֲ��ý and Lewiston community played to a full house in Schaeffer Theatre on Jan. 20, 2020. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

This year’s edition aims to “reflect Black grief, Black resistance, and most importantly Black joy through poems, dances, speeches, and songs,” said organizer Sam Jean-Francois ’23. “All members of the greater �ֲ��ý community are welcome to help us embody the beauty of Black joy, and hold this space of resistance with us.”