Johns Hopkins Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration

Description

The annual Johns Hopkins Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration, in its 39th year, will be held virtually from Jan. 11–15, 2021. The weeklong celebration, organized this year around a central theme of "Now Is the Time for Hope and Healing," will embody the inspiring essence of awards ceremonies held in years past and will include daily events and activities designed for all members of the Johns Hopkins community.

Highlights of the week include:

• Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Awards ceremony
• Fireside chat with keynote speaker and political strategist Donna Brazile and Sherita Hill Golden, Johns Hopkins Medicine's vice president and chief diversity officer
• Daily inspirational videos from Johns Hopkins leaders
• Entertainment by Unified Voices, a choir composed of Johns Hopkins faculty and staff members and members of the community
• Live and prerecorded webinars focused on hope and healing and designed for flexible viewing within employees' schedules, hosted by the Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Health Equity
• Deeper-dive activities such as a book discussion on A Promised Land by Barack Obama and a film screening of King in the Wilderness, followed by a live Q&A

More information about individual events and programming, as well as registration links, is available at https://intranet.insidehopkinsmedicine.org/mlk/2021/.

The annual commemoration event, traditionally held on the university's East Baltimore campus, celebrates the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and the spirit of service at Johns Hopkins. The event was founded by Levi Watkins Jr., a dedicated civil rights advocate and the first black chief resident of cardiac surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He made medical history by implanting the first automatic heart defibrillator in a patient in 1980. Watkins died in 2015 at age 70.