1. I am America. I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.
— Muhammad Ali The Greatest (1975)

2. Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise, I rise, I rise.
— Maya Angelou “Still I rise,” And Still I Rise (1978)

3. Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can.
— Arthur Ashe quoted in Sports Illustrated

4. Just like you can buy grades of silk, you can buy grades of justice.
— Ray Charles

5. The past is a ghost, the future a dream. All we ever have is now.
–– Bill Cosby

6. There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution…
— Frederick Douglass

7. You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.
— Billie Holiday

8. Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and when you have peace of mind.
— Quincy Jones

9. Do not call for Black power or green power. Call for brain power.
— Barbara Jordan

10. Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
–– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

11. The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself – the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us – that’s where it’s at.
— Jesse Owens, Blackthink (1970)

12. I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminshes fear.
— Rosa Parks

13. Have a vision. Be demanding.
— Colin Powell

14. Be Black, shine, aim high.
— Leontyne Price

15. God gives nothing to those who keep their arms crossed.
— African Proverb

16. Freedom is never given; it is won.
— A. Philip Randolph in keynote speech given at the Second National Negro Congress in 1937

17. When I found I had crossed that line, [on her first escape from slavery, 1845] I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything.
— Harriet Tubman

18. Black people have always been America’s wilderness in search of a promised land.
– Cornel West, Race Matters
19. Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.
— Booker T. Washington

20. Yes we can.
–– Barack Obama, 45th President of the United States

You must be willing to suffer the anger of the opponent, and yet not return anger. No matter how emotional your opponents are, you must remain calm.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom, 1958
(compiled by Cheryl Eldridge)

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) was a Baptist minister and social activist who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. Inspired by advocates of nonviolence such as Mahatma Gandhi, King sought equality for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and victims of injustice through peaceful protest. He was the driving force behind watershed events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington, which helped bring about such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is remembered each year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a U.S. federal holiday since 1986.
King Jr.: Early Years and Family
The second child of Martin Luther King Sr. (1899-1984), a pastor, and Alberta Williams King (1904-1974), a former schoolteacher, Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929. Along with his older sister, the future Christine King Farris (born 1927), and younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King (1930-1969), he grew up in the city’s Sweet Auburn neighborhood, then home to some of the most prominent and prosperous African Americans in the country.
Did You Know?
The final section of Martin Luther King Jr.’s eloquent and iconic “I Have a Dream” speech is believed to have been largely improvised.
A gifted student, King attended segregated public schools and at the age of 15 was admitted to Morehouse College, the alma mater of both his father and maternal grandfather, where he studied medicine and law. Although he had not intended to follow in his father’s footsteps by joining the ministry, he changed his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Benjamin Mays, an influential theologian and outspoken advocate for racial equality. After graduating in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his predominantly white senior class.
King then enrolled in a graduate program at Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning a doctorate in systematic theology two years later. While in Boston he met Coretta Scott (1927-2006), a young singer from  Alabama who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. The couple wed in 1953 and settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. They had four children: Yolanda Denise King (1955-2007), Martin Luther King III (born 1957), Dexter Scott King (born 1961) and Bernice Albertine King (born 1963).
Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
The King family had been living in Montgomery for less than a year when the highly segregated city became the epicenter of the burgeoning struggle for civil rights in America, galvanized by the landmark Brown v.Board of Education of Topeka decision of 1954. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks (1913-2005), secretary of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a bus boycott that would continue for 381 days, placing a severe economic strain on the public transit system and downtown business owners. They chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader and official spokesman.
By the time the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating on public buses unconstitutional in November 1956, King, heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) and the activist Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), had entered the national spotlight as an inspirational proponent of organized, nonviolent resistance. (He had also become a target for white supremacists, who firebombed his family home that January.) Emboldened by the boycott’s success, in 1957 he and other civil rights activists – most of them fellow ministers – founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group committed to achieving full equality for African Americans through nonviolence. (Its motto was “Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed.”) He would remain at the helm of this influential organization until his death.
King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
In his role as SCLC president, Martin Luther King Jr. traveled across the country and around the world, giving lectures on nonviolent protest and civil rights as well as meeting with religious figures, activists and political leaders. (During a month-long trip to India in 1959, he had the opportunity to meet Gandhi, the man he described in his autobiography as “the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change.”) King also authored several books and articles during this time.
In 1960 King and his family moved to Atlanta, his native city, where he joined his father as co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. This new position did not stop King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players in many of the most significant civil rights battles of the 1960s. Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly severe test during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest segregation, unfair hiring practices and other injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities. Arrested for his involvement on April 12, King penned the civil rights manifesto known as the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an eloquent defense of civil disobedience addressed to a group of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.
King Marches for Freedom
Later that year, Martin Luther King Jr. worked with a number of civil rights and religious groups to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful political rally designed to shed light on the injustices African Americans continued to face across the country. Held on August 28 and attended by some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is widely regarded as a watershed moment in the history of the American civil rights movement and a factor in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The march culminated in King’s most famous address, known as the “I Have a Dream” speech, a spirited call for peace and equality that many consider a masterpiece of rhetoric. Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial – a monument to the president who a century earlier had brought down the institution of slavery in the United States – he shared his vision of a future in which “this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” The speech and march cemented King’s reputation at home and abroad; later that year he was named Man of the Year by TIME magazine and in 1964 became the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the spring of 1965, King’s elevated profile drew international attention to the violence that erupted between white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where the SCLC and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had organized a voter registration campaign. Captured on television, the brutal scene outraged many Americans and inspired supporters from across the country to gather in Selma and take part in a march to Montgomery led by King and supported by President Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973), who sent in federal troops to keep the peace. That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote – first awarded by the 15th Amendment – to all African Americans.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Years and Assassination
The events in Selma deepened a growing rift between Martin Luther King Jr. and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent methods and commitment to working within the established political framework. As more militant Black leaders such as Stokley Carmichael (1941-1998) rose to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism to address issues such as the Vietnam War  and poverty among Americans of all races. In 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious program known as the Poor People’s Campaign, which was to include a massive march on the capital.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, King was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, where he had traveled to support a sanitation workers’ strike. In the wake of his death, a wave of riots swept major cities across the country, while President Johnson declared a national day of mourning. James Earl Ray (1928-1998), an escaped convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. (He later recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the King family, before his death in 1998.)
After years of campaigning by activists, members of Congress and Coretta Scott King, among others, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) signed a bill creating a U.S. federal holiday in honor of King. Observed on the third Monday of January, it was first celebrated in 1986.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – In the midst of nationwide discussions about race in America, the MLK Unity Breakfast Committee, led by the CAC (Community Affairs Committee) announced its theme and keynote speaker for the 29th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Unity Breakfast held on Monday, January 19, 2015 at 7:30 a.m. at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Center in recognition of the National Holiday bearing the name of the slain civil rights leader.
“We chose the theme ‘A Time To Break Silence’ based on Dr. King’s speech given exactly one year prior to his assassination,” said Unity Breakfast Chairman, Scott Douglas, who also serves as Executive Director for Greater Birmingham Ministries. “It seems that the new generation is beginning to find its voice in speaking about issues related to race. Our event theme should remind us of the historic courage of Dr. King while challenging us to speak out about injustices we encounter in current times.”
Birmingham’s Annual Unity Breakfast hosts between 1,500 and 2,000 attendees each year, including a mix of leaders from the public and private sectors. Each year, the Unity Breakfast Committee, comprised of five civil rights and social justice organizations, provides scholarship funds for area high school students who submit essays based on the featured theme.
The featured speaker of the breakfast will be Birmingham native and former Saturday Night Live writer and comedic biographer, Tanner Colby.
“Tanner Colby has proven his ability to talk, comfortably, about integration in America, a topic too many people find uncomfortable,” said U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance. “Birmingham is fortunate to be able to bring this accomplished author home to address the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Unity Breakfast and help us break the silence and openly discuss issues that remain. Birmingham remains the preeminent example of peaceful resolution to challenging issues affecting diverse communities. The ‘Birmingham example’ is as relevant today as it was forty years ago.”
Colby, a New York Times bestselling author, was nominated for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-Fiction for his book, Some of my Best Friends are Black: The Strange Story of Integration of America. Colby has also written and co-written biographies about Michael Jackson, Chris Farley and Jim Belushi.
The book, Some of my Best Friends are Black, will be the centerpiece of a city-wide community dialogue project held in mid-February in partnership with Ensley-based The Bethesda Life Center with support from the office of Joyce Vance, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. Details of the book project will be announced at the breakfast.
“Tanner Colby is a thought-provoking writer and speaker,” says The Bethesda Life Center CEO, Bettina Byrd-Giles. “We look forward to partnering with U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, the CAC, and civic leaders to lead a city-wide discussion about race relations in the Birmingham area.”
In addition to the featured speaker and the city-wide book discussion, attendees will see three high school students receive cash scholarships for their essays submitted on the theme: ‘A Time To Break Silence.’
The 2015 MLK Unity Breakfast is supported by top sponsors, the City of Birmingham and AL.com/The Birmingham News. Corporate tables are $500; Individual seats are $30. For interest in being a sponsor, purchasing a table, then contact Meredith Dale at unity@relaxitshandled.com or leave a message at (205) 419-7085.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” — often referred to as “Black American National Anthem”— is a song written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) in 1899 and set to music by his brother  John Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954) in 1900. It is also the name of one of the authorized hymnals in the Episcopal church.
History
“Lift Every Voice and Sing” was publicly performed first as a poem as part of a celebration of Lincoln’s Birthday on February 12, 1900, by 500 school children at the segregated Stanton School. Its principal, James Weldon Johnson , wrote the words to introduce its honored guest Booker T. Washington. The poem was set to music soon after by Johnson’s brother John in 1900.
In 1939, Augusta Savage received a commission from the World’s Fair and created a 16-foot plaster sculpture called Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing which was destroyed by bulldozers at the close of the fair.
In Maya Angelou’s 1969 autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the song is sung by the audience and students at Maya’s eighth grade graduation, after a white school official dashes the educational aspirations of her class.
In 1990, singer Melba Moore  released a modern rendition of the song, which she recorded along with others including R&B artists Stephanie Mills, Anita Baker, Dionne Warwick, Bobby Brown, Stevie Wonder, Jeffrey Osborne and Howard Hewitt; and gospel artists BeBe & CeCe Winans, Take 6 and The Clark Sisters, after which, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” was entered into the Congressional Record by Del. Walter Fauntroy (D-DC).
In 2008, jazz singer Rene Marie was asked to perform the national anthem at a civic event in Denver, Colorado, where she caused a controversy by substituting the words of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” into the song. This arrangement of the words of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” with the melody of “The Star Spangled Banner” became part of the titular suite on her 2011 CD release, “The Voice of My Beautiful Country.”
On January 20, 2009, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who was formerly president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, used a near-verbatim recitation of the song’s third stanza to begin his benediction at the inauguration ceremony for President Barack Obama.
Lyrics
Lift every voice and sing

Till earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise

High as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun

Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,

Bitter the chastening rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;

Yet with a steady beat,

Have not our weary feet

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,

Out from the gloomy past,

Till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,

God of our silent tears,

Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who has by Thy might Led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places,our God, where we met Thee,

Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;

Shadowed beneath Thy hand,

May we forever stand.

True to our God,

True to our native land.

From Staff Reports

Forty-nine years after John Lewis and other marchers tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, memories of “Bloody Sunday” are still vivid in his mind. It was one of the defining moments of the civil rights era.
“We were beaten, tear gassed, trampled and chased by men on horseback,” said Lewis, a civil rights activist and Democratic congressman from Georgia.
Lewis — portrayed by the actor Stephan James in the historical drama “Selma” — told The Associated Press the film is “very powerful.”
“Selma,” directed by Ava DuVernay, is based on the 1965 marches in Alabama led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lewis says the film’s release now is fitting after protests over events in Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere.
According to ˆThe Detroit News”, As the movie “Selma” goes into wider release this week, veteran Detroiters will be reminded of a link our city has to the violent events of March 1965 in Selma, Alabama.
Viola Gregg Liuzzo, 39, a Detroit mother of five, was one of three people killed in Selma during voting rights demonstrations. Liuzzo was shot and killed March 25, 1965, by Ku Klux Klansmen on a desolate stretch of U.S. 80 as she drove Leroy Moton, a Black demonstrator, back to Montgomery.
“Selma,” tells the story of those violent weeks when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. helped lead a push for federal action protecting Black voting rights in one of the most racist counties in Alabama.
Liuzzo’s daughter, Mary Liuzzo Lilleboe, was disappointed at first when she heard that her mother’s story isn’t highlighted in the film. “You become hypersensitive to the details, you want everything to be perfect about your loved one, but it’s never going to be that,” said Lilleboe, 66, an Oregon resident.
Marchers including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and wife Coretta, center, during the five day, 50 mile march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, March 1965. (Photo: The Detroit News archives)
Her mother would have told her to keep her eye on the big picture.
“My mother would not have been concerned about credit or somebody knowing that she was even part of it,” Lillieboe said. “What she cared about was that people were being helped.”
And because of “Selma,” younger generations will find out what went on there. Lilleboe is also pleased that King is the lead character in a feature film, for the first time ever. “Can you believe that?” she said.
Lilleboe’s sister, Sally Liuzzo, lives in Tennessee and runs a Facebook page, “Viola Liuzzo Civil Rights Martyr,” in tribute to their mother. In just a week after the movie’s initial release and the airing of an Oprah Winfrey “Selma” special Sunday, it added 180 new likes, and the number rises every day.
Before Liuzzo was murdered, two others were killed in or near Selma: Jimmie Lee Jackson, a Black civil rights worker shot by state troopers, and James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister beaten to death March 11 after leaving a restaurant.
Their murders are shown in the film; Liuzzo’s is not. Liuzzo is portrayed in the film by actress Tara Ochs, and she is first seen sitting with her husband in a modest living room, recoiling in horror at the images on TV of Selma marchers being beaten and tear-gassed on “Bloody Sunday.”
Ochs isn’t identified at first as Liuzzo, but she gets a lot of face time in the film. She’s also seen helping volunteers, and then marching along U.S. 80. At the end of the film, there is text under her image identifying her as Viola Liuzzo, murdered by the KKK as she drove a demonstrator home.
Although she has no lines in “Selma,” Ochs is a magnetic presence as Liuzzo.
“I have no doubt that the very simple but powerful way that (director) Ava (DuVernay) included Viola in the story will be the catalyst for many people finally recognizing and appreciating this incredible woman,” Ochs wrote The News in an email. “It speaks volumes that the struggle for civil rights was felt in Detroit as well at that time, and not just in the South. That’s a powerful message for today, don’t you think? Sometimes we Southerners feel that this struggle is all our fault, and all our fight. But as Mrs. Liuzzo said: ‘It’s everybody’s fight.’ ”
Ochs will meet with Liuzzo’s adult children in Selma in March, at a 50th anniversary commemoration.
When the events at Selma started, Liuzzo was a student at Wayne State, where she was studying sociology. The thrice-married Detroiter was feisty and outspoken. She was always picking up stray animals and pointing out injustice to her five children, Sally, 6; Tony, 10; Tommy, 14; Mary 17, and Penny, 18.
She was born in Pennsylvania, but grew up in Tennessee, where she saw the effect of Jim Crow laws firsthand, before moving to Detroit. “How would you feel if you never saw a white Santa Claus or a pretty white girl on a magazine cover?” she would ask her children.
Some vestiges of her Southern background that remained were her cooking, and the fact that she liked to go barefoot — Liuzzo shucked her shoes in the Selma march.
She loved classical music, and studying with friends at the family house on Marlowe in northwest Detroit. When she heard about her friends’ plans to go to Selma after King’s call for action, she told husband Anthony that she hoped he’d understand, and left March 16 in her 1963 Oldsmobile.
After her murder, Anthony, a business agent for Teamsters Local 247, spoke to The Detroit News about his wife. King called three times that day, the president four times, as the shattered family absorbed the shock.
“She was a champion of the underdog,” Liuzzo said. “She thought people’s rights were being violated in Selma and she had to do something about it in her own way. That was her downfall. Many times I had told her, ‘One of these days, the humanitarian things you do are going to backfire. And she would answer, ‘Man is man no matter who or what he is.’ ”
Oldest daughter, Penny Liuzzo, then 18, said: “Mother felt there was too much talk and not enough action, and she wanted to do something.”
Liuzzo and her Wayne State friends weren’t the only Michiganians who went to Selma. A delegation of 22 Metro Detroit religious leaders left for the embattled Southern city, including Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Eastern Orthodox leaders. U.S. Reps. John Conyers and Charles Diggs flew down from Washington, D.C.
Downtown Detroit was the site of a sympathy march March 9, led by Gov. George Romney and Detroit Mayor Jerome P. Cavanagh that drew more than 4,000, including Rosa Parks.
The news of Liuzzo’s death was front-page news in Detroit. Teamsters president James R. Hoffa had her body flown back to Detroit, and Teamsters guarded the Liuzzo home around the clock, as their wives cooked and cleaned.
The years after Liuzzo’s death were difficult for her family. Her children were harassed at school in Detroit, and a cross was burned on the family’s lawn. There was a smear campaign against Liuzzo, with charges that she had gone south to consort with other men, stories that were eventually traced to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
Soon after Liuzzo’s murder, director Hoover admitted that an FBI informant, Gary Thomas Rowe, was among the Klansmen in the car who shot and killed her. Rowe identified the three other Klansmen to authorities, but they were acquitted of Liuzzo’s murder. (Rowe was granted immunity).
The Klansmen were convicted of violating her civil rights in a federal trial. Rowe disappeared into the witness protection program, and died in 1998. A lawsuit the Liuzzo family brought against the FBI and Rowe for his role in Liuzzo’s murder was dismissed in 1983 by U.S. District Judge Charles Joiner.
Was her sacrifice worth it? For Americans already sickened by the civil rights violence, the death of two white northerners gave what had been happening to generations of Blacks a visceral impact. The passage of the Voting Rights Act, a long shot previously, gained momentum. President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill into law in August.
Lilleboe believes it was worth it, even to her grieving family.
“I think all of us would say that our lives have been really rich, we’ve gotten a lot by being my mother’s children,” said Lilleboe. “One of the most damaging things that people said to us was that our mother didn’t love us, or she wouldn’t have gone down there. But the love I have received from people because I am my mother’s daughter, that’s helped, because it was absolutely the way I experienced my mother’s love.”
swhitall@detroitnews.com

A Selma timeline
Feb. 26, 1965: Jimmie Lee Jackson is killed by an Alabama state trooper in a cafe, after he took part in a voting rights march in Marion, Alabama, near Selma.
March 7: “Bloody Sunday,” the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, organized by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but led by others in his absence. State troopers attacked the marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The violent images disturbed many, including President Lyndon B. Johnson.
March 9: King resolves to try to march again, and does, although he has been forbidden to by a federal judge. After state troopers step aside for the marchers, King decides it could be a trap, and turns back to Selma.
March 11: Boston minister James Reeb, who had traveled to Selma to take part in the voting rights marches, dies after being clubbed on the head by an attacker. He had been set upon by white supremacists after leaving a restaurant.
March 15: Johnson introduces a bill to Congress that would become known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
March 25: Detroiter Viola Liuzzo is gunned down by Ku Klux Klansmen in her car on U.S. 80, just hours after taking part in the march on Montgomery from Selma. She is driving a Black demonstrator, Leroy Moton, home.
Aug. 6: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is signed into law by Johnson.

 BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Sunday, January 18,  at 3 p.m. – Alys Stephens Center, Jemison Concert Hall – Join the Alabama Symphony Orchestra in our yearly concert celebrating the legacy and leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. “Reflect & Rejoice:  A Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.” Michael Morgan of the Oakland East Bay Symphony conducts this special performance with host Jeh Jeh Pruitt, young cello phonon Malik Kofi, Roderick George’s tenor voice, and featuring the soaring voices of The Aeolians of Oakwood University and the Lockhart Dance Theatre Youth Ensemble.
Tickets are $9- $24 and can be purchased online: www.alabamasymphony.org, or by calling the Alys Stephens Ticketing Center at 205-975-2787.
This concert is a partnership with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and media partner, IHeart Radio. The program is made possible through grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the City of Birmingham.