Hundreds of people gathered in Lansing Monday for the 41st annual Day of Celebration to mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It’s among the largest and longest-running annual gatherings to mark the civil rights icon’s birthday.
Tony Baltimore is a vice chair of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commission of Mid-Michigan. Baltimore said he wants attendees to take away a message of “love, peace, and happiness” from the event.
He said honoring Reverend King’s legacy can begin with acts as simple as being kind and talking to one another.
“The future is definitely bright for justice. And I think if we keep talking to one another and being kind to one another, I think we can get there. And I think the first thing that we need to do is come to the table and just start talking,” Baltimore said.
The event featured scholarship awards, musical performances, and speeches.
Several speakers, including Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist, Michigan Supreme Court Justice Kyra Harris Bolden, and civil rights activist Diane Nash, stressed accountability to King’s legacy and actions. At times, speeches warned against simplifying King into a caricature.
Nash, a Freedom Rider who helped desegregate interstate buses, had stark warnings for the audience.
“You should not take fascist and non-democratic governments lightly,” Nash said before discussing the physical and sexual violence that came with everyday life in the Jim Crow American south.
She said marches and demonstrations only took up, at most, a fifth of organizers’ time during the Civil Rights Movement. Organizing, meeting, and coming up with strategies like how to find babysitters so more people could get involved, on the other hand, took up most attention.
Nash said she feared rather than sharing that commitment, people have been too accepting of oppression.
“We citizens sent the message that you can mistreat us, you can rule against the people, you can undermine peoples’ vote and the people won’t do anything to safeguard their republic,” Nash said.
Meanwhile, Bolden’s speech discussed her personal journey to the state Supreme Court. Bolden, the first Black woman elected to serve on the high court, argued representation is important for inspiring future generations.
She said it’s everyone’s responsibility to build a better world.
“We have babies looking at us for the answers. Right now, in this moment, we are shaping their future and what this world is going to look like when they become our age,” Bolden said during the keynote address.
