"Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve," Martin Luther King Jr. once said.
Emory's King Week, the annual campus celebration of King's life and work, is set for Jan. 15-24. The schedule is packed with panel discussions, readings, exhibits, worship services, and plenty of opportunities for service.
King Week, usually ushered in on the MLK holiday, will begin one day earlier this year on Sunday, Jan. 15 with a conversation and performance by pioneering poet Eugene Redmond. The event coincides with the 25th anniversary of Drumvoices Revue, a multicultural literary journal established by Redmond, professor of English emeritus at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
On the MLK holiday Jan. 16, hundreds of volunteers from across campus will plant trees, paint arts facilities and sort medical supplies for overseas clinics as part of Emory's Day On. Organizers are reaching out to undergraduates, graduate students, alumni, faculty and staff to lend a hand with more than a dozen projects.
Sign up to volunteer for Emory’s Day On.
Emory continues its partnership with Trees Atlanta for the traditional "Remembering Martin Luther King Through Service" tree-planting in the Martin Luther King Jr. Historic District on Jan 16. An estimated 50 trees are planted each year, and neighborhood children often join the volunteers to dig holes and learn how trees benefit the community.
On Tuesday, Jan. 17, members of the National PanHellenic Council and the Multicultural Greek Council at Emory will make no-sew fleece blankets for inner-city preschool children.
Later that day, Tulane University's Melissa Harris-Perry will deliver the King Week keynote speech on "King's Legacy and the New Civil Rights Frontiers." A political science professor, Harris-Perry is also a contributor to MSNBC and a columnist for The Nation. The Cannon Chapel talk at 4 p.m. is sponsored by Emory's African American Studies Department, the Laney Graduate School, the Office of Community and Diversity, the Division of Campus Life and the Martin Luther King Holiday Observance Committee.
For a full schedule of events, see the King Week calendar and look for more information to come in Emory Report.