Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration 2025: The Darkness at Midnight
Join us in honoring the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. on Saturday, January 25th, 2025, at 12 pm EST. The event will be held at the GSU Metcalf Hall, 775 Commonwealth Ave, Boston MA 02215.
Register on Eventbrite HERE:
This celebration is hosted by Boston University’s Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground and the City of Boston. We are grateful for the support and sponsorship of our co-hosts BU Libraries, Boston University Government & Community Affairs, and the Dean of Students Office.
This year’s theme is “The Darkness at Midnight” inspired by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1962 speech “A Knock at Midnight.” The sermon describes society in a moral, spiritual, and psychological “state of chaos.”
Our program will celebrate Dr. King and highlight his written and spoken work.
This year’s keynote speaker is writer and poet Cole Arthur Riley. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us and Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Guernica, and The Washington Post. Cole is also the creator and writer of Black Liturgies, a project that integrates spiritual practice with Black emotion, Black literature, and the Black body.
In addition, we welcome you to join a special Saturday tour of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Reading Room in the Mugar Memorial Library after the celebration.
The Boston University Libraries proudly holds an archival collection of Dr. King’s manuscripts, notebooks, correspondence, printed material, financial and legal papers, photographs, and other items dating from 1947 to 1964.
Tour times:
If pre-registration is closed, there may still be an opportunity to attend a tour on a first-come-first-serve basis by heading to library entrance on the first floor of the George Sherman Union after the MLK Celebration. Staff will be on site to assist.
If you are unable to attend the 2025 MLK Celebration in person, it will be live-streamed below on Saturday, January 25th, 2025.
Planned Program
Event and Theme Introduction: “The Darkness at Midnight”
Nicholaus Bates
Director of Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground
Remarks from Boston University
Dr. Melissa L. Gilliam
President, Boston University
Reading: Excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “A Knock a Midnight”
Mariaelena Suazo Rosario (CGS ’28)
Remarks from the City of Boston
Segun Idowu
Chief of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion
Reading: Cole Arthur Riley’s biography
Bermina Chery (CAS ’25)
Keynote
Cole Arthur Riley
Featured Conversation
Associate Professor of New Testament at BU’s School of Theology Dr. Shively T.J. Smith and Cole Arthur Riley
Closing Remarks
Nicholaus Bates
Musical Arrangement
Hamilton-Garrett Youth Choir
“Everybody wishes to love and be loved. He who feels that he is not loved feels that he does not count. Much has happened in the modern world to make men feel that they do not belong.” – From Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s sermon “A Knock at Midnight”