Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commission of Mid-Michigan 2023 MLK Day of Celebration

Fred D. Gray

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commission of Mid-Michigan 2023 MLK Day of Celebration event
Monday, Jan. 16, 11 a.m.
Lansing Center
333 Michigan Ave., Lansing

This year marks the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commission of Mid-Michigan’s 38th annual MLK Day celebration and the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that the event, the largest MLK Day luncheon in the nation, will be held in person at the Lansing Center. This year’s theme is “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.”

The luncheon will include speeches, performances and an awards ceremony for the winners of the commission’s Mark S. McDaniel Legacy Scholarship Contest and 2023 Essay Contest. Mark McDaniel, CEO of Cinnaire, one of the commission’s largest corporate sponsors, will host the event.

This year’s keynote speaker is Fred D. Gray, a Montgomery, Alabama, native and one of the nation’s leading civil rights attorneys. Gray, 92, represented Rosa Parks after she refused to move from her bus seat in Montgomery. He has also represented the Freedom Riders, the Selma-to-Montgomery Marchers, Tuskegee Syphilis Study victims and was the first civil rights attorney for King. He has won numerous school desegregation and voting rights lawsuits and continues to practice law to this day. He is also an ordained minister, lecturer, former legislator and published author.

Gray was recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Joe Biden, the nation’s highest honor, and he is also a recipient of the Charles Hamilton Houston Medallion of Merit from the Washington Bar Association, Harvard University Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Medallion, the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award and the Federal Bar Association’s Sarah T. Hughes Civil Rights Award. Named “chief counsel of the civil rights era,” he served as one of the first African Americans in the Alabama Legislature after Reconstruction, was the first African American president of the Alabama State Bar Association and was the 43rd president of the National Bar Association.

“We are thrilled to be back in person this year at the Lansing Center to honor Dr. King and the many civil rights advocates, thought leaders and changemakers,” said Elaine Hardy, commission chair. “We’re equally as excited to be able to share Fred Gray’s remarkable and courageous story and illustrious, trailblazing career that has spanned several decades and advanced a more equitable future.”

Tickets are $60 each or $425 for a table of eight and can be purchased via mlkmidmichigan.com/day-of-celebration. For more information, visit the website or contact Fonda Brewer at 517-410-2998.