Tacoma-area events will honor MLK with a march, speakers and music

Several local events will commemorate the life of Martin Luther King Jr.:

Saturday

▪ The Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration will be from 10 a.m.-noon Saturday at the McGavick Conference Center, 4500 Steilacoom Blvd. SW, Lakewood.

Sponsored by the City of Lakewood, the free event will feature the Total Experience Gospel Choir, Little Church Prairie Bells, school choirs and more.

For more information, call 253-983-7858.

Monday

▪ The 2018 Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Breakfast: Stand Up/Speak Out will feature keynote speaker Rosalyn M. Brock, chairman emeritus of the National Board of Directors for the NAACP.

Hosted by the University of Washington Tacoma, the annual breakfast will be from is 8-10:30 a.m. Monday at the UWT’s University Y Student Center, 1710 Market St.

Tickets are $10-$20.

For more information, call 253-692-4501 or go online to tacoma.uw.edu/mlk.

▪ The Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration at the Washington State History Museum will feature a performance Monday of “11 Days in the Life of Dr. King.”

The 2 p.m. presentation is educational, family-friendly and includes song, dance spoken word and poetry vignettes.

The museum, 1911 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, will be open to the pubic all day in King’s honor.

For more information, call 253-272-3500 or go online to washingtonhistory.org.

▪ The Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration and March will go from the downtown Tacoma campus of Bates Technical College to the Greater Tacoma Convention Center for the city’s Martin Luther King Jr. event.

Marchers will meet at 9 a.m. Monday in the cafeteria at Bates, 1101 S. Yakima Ave. At 10 a.m., the group will march to the city’s celebration.

For more information about the celebration and the march, call 253-680-7000 or go to bates.ctc.edu.

▪ The City of Tacoma’s 30th Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration on Monday will explore “Be The Change.”

The keynote speaker will be Nate Bowling, 2014 recipient of the Milken Family Foundation’s National Educator Award, the 2016 Washington State Teacher of the Year and current teacher at Lincoln High School.

The event will include awarding the 2018 Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award to Dexter Gorden, director of the Race & Pedagogy Institute at the University of Puget Sound.

The community celebration will start at 11 a.m. at the Greater Tacoma Convention Center, 1500 Broadway.

Tuesday

▪ The University of Puget Sound’s Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration on Tuesday will feature Eddie Moore Jr., author and national educator on diversity and founder of the White Privilege Conference.

Moore will give the talk “Dr. Martin Luther King: Why Keep Dreaming?”

The free event will be from 7-8:30 p.m. at Kilworth Memorial Chapel on the UPS campus. The university’s Keep Living the Dream Award, honoring campus members who embody King’s legacy, will be awarded.

This story was originally published January 12, 2018 at 11:00 AM with the headline "Tacoma-area events will honor MLK with a march, speakers and music."