Note: This story has been updated to include simulcast locations.
World-renowned opera singer Denyce Graves and Levi Garraway, nephew of the event's founder, civil rights activist, and medical pioneer Levi Watkins Jr., will speak at Johns Hopkins' 34th Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration. The event will be held from noon to 1:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 8, in Turner Auditorium on the East Baltimore campus.
In addition to her career as a performer, Graves is a faculty member in the Voice Department of Johns Hopkins' Peabody Institute. Garraway is an associate professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School and director of the Joint Center for Cancer Precision Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the Broad Institute.
Watkins, who was on the Johns Hopkins faculty for more than 40 years and who died in April, will be remembered in a video tribute.
Unified Voices, a choir of local residents and Johns Hopkins employees, will sing gospel selections, and recipients of the 2015 MLK Jr. Community Service Awards will be recognized.
For those unable to attend, the commemoration will be simulcast to JH@Eastern (Suite B102) and Homewood's Mattin Center (Room 160, Morris Offit Building) from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Previous speakers at the annual commemoration event have included the Rev. Desmond Tutu, Maya Angelou, James Earl Jones, Harry Belafonte, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Stevie Wonder, and Martin Luther King III.
