UPDATE: MLK March Slated Jan. 20, 2020; Change in Program Speaker
PLEASE NOTE: The scheduled keynote speaker below for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day program had to cancel, and efforts are underway to find another speaker. Updated information will be released as soon as possible.
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 19, 2019) — The University of Kentucky and the Lexington community will celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day with the annual march in downtown Lexington and a program featuring the Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock. Since 2005 Warnock has served as the senior pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King was baptized and later ordained.
An American federal holiday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is observed on the third Monday of January each year. The upcoming MLK Day will be celebrated Jan. 20, 2020.
Lexington’s MLK Day celebration begins with the Holiday Freedom March at 10 a.m. Participants will begin lining up at 9 a.m., inside the corridor of downtown Lexington Center's Heritage Hall on West Main Street.
After participants complete the Freedom March, the Commemorative Holiday Program will begin at 11 a.m. in Heritage Hall in the Lexington Convention Center with Warnock, who has significantly inspired and enhanced his church’s legacy of social activism. One of his projects resulted in the registration of 250,000 new voters in the state of Georgia. He has been featured on CNN, the "CBS Evening News," The Huffington Post, and in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which hailed him as “a fitting heir to the mantle once worn by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”
In the tradition of his cousin Marvin Gaye, singer/composer Donnie will end the day with his politically oriented, consciousness-raising version of modern soul music.
For more details about the day’s events, visit www.uky.edu/mlk/content/event-schedule.
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In 2022, UK was ranked by Forbes as one of the “Best Employers for New Grads” and named a “Diversity Champion” by INSIGHT into Diversity, a testament to our commitment to advance Kentucky and create a community of belonging for everyone. While our mission looks different in many ways than it did in 1865, the vision of service to our Commonwealth and the world remains the same. We are the University for Kentucky.