Written by Tanya Terry, with all images courtesy of Whitaker Photography
The 41st annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Community Celebration at The Gloria Coles Flint Public Library will aim to uplift and unite. The theme for this year’s celebration “Mission Possible II: Building Community, Uniting a Nation the Nonviolent Way,” will be reflected on in multiple ways, by multiple age groups. The event will take place on Saturday, January 17, at noon to 1 p.m., in the C.S. Mott Foundation Community Room of the library.
Leah Feimster, communications and community engagement coordinator at the Gloria Coles Flint Public Library, shared with the Courier that the Library got the theme from the King Center. Last year’s theme was “Mission Possible.”
Feimster also shared that the community asked for the Library to continue serving the community and honoring the King Center through the annual celebration.
“This theme is definitely going to celebrate and highlight the final connection between caring for ourselves, and also caring for our community,” Feimster added. “We’re going to have a lot of music. We’re going to have youth performances and community engagement-because we aim to reflect his message of unity, nonviolence and service.”
Sandra Etherly-Johnson, executive director of DEI & Community Relations for the Flint & Genesee Group, will serve as emcee for the celebration.
“We are really excited,” said Feimster. “We are hosting our 41st Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Community Celebration. We typically try to find emcees and speakers that complement one another. We are really honored to have Sandra Etherthy-Johnson…She is a very vibrant community leader. She will guide the program…”
The keynote speaker will be Carma Lewis, president of Flint Neighborhoods United and community relations manager at the Genesee County Landbank. She will speak on community leadership, collective care and the ongoing work of building strong, united neighborhoods. She will also bring an inspiration from Dr. King’s principle into today’s context.
“We really choose Carma because she’s very passionate about the Flint community. She’s an active leader. She’s an active voice, and she is really about change and helping to bring them and make them happen. So, we’re really excited to have somebody as energetic and passionate as Carma, to not only represent the Flint community, but to stand by it by action to give something for us to move on.”
The event will feature a musical performance by soloist Jasmine Purman, who is a student in Flint. She will sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black National Anthem. Her accompanist for those empowering moments will be Anthony Feimster Jr.
Youth engagement through XINOS & KUDOS of the National Sorority of Phi Delta Kappa will be another inspiring element of the program.
“The National Sorority of Phi Delta Kappa, especially the Gamma Delta Chapter, are a very powerful group in the Flint community. They have a powerful group, which are the XINOS, which are the young girls and the KUDOS, which are the young men. They will be coming to provide a youth performance with us at the MLK event. We’re very excited to see what they do. We’re excited to have generational performances!”
Dr. Tiffany Quinn will share a “healing moment” with attendees.
“Sometimes we get so busy in our day, or during our life, that we forget to take a moment. I think in celebrations like these, when we have something so important as Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration, we need to take a moment. So, we’re going to take a mindfulness moment.”
Books will be given out, and refreshments will be served.
The goal is for all community members to feel they can participate. So, the celebration will include ASL (American Sign Language) and live Spanish interpretation from the Latinx Center.
“We hope that with the leadership of our emcee, the insights of our kenote speaker and our amazing performances and special mindfulness moment that we understand and the community understands that Dr. King’s work is ongoing and still possible today.”
