Centre’s Martin Luther King Jr. convocation to feature Charles Booker
Kentucky native and former state representative Charles Booker will speak at Centre’s annual community convocation to honor Martin Luther King Jr. The event will be Monday, Jan. 17, at 7 p.m. in Newlin Hall of Centre’s Norton Center for the Arts.
In 2020, Booker spoke at the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and invoked King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
“There is “no root of racism we cannot pull up” if we remain united, Booker promised. “We stand here in the legacy of the dream. The dream that Dr. King lifted up.”
Booker told the 2020 D.C. crowd, “We’re here today because we know that dream is not done, because although they marched for us then, the cries we’re hearing across the country right now—from Kenosha to Kentucky, from the hood where I’m from to the hollers in Appalachia to everywhere in between—those cries let us know we have more marching to do.”
The Centre program will also include a recitation of portions of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech by three local schoolchildren, presentations by two Centre students, and the singing of the Black National Anthem (“Lift Every Voice and Sing”) by Melisha Johnson Boyd, president of the Kentucky First Jurisdiction Music Department.
Earlier in the day, Centre will hold its fourth annual MLK Day of Service. The event is the only federal holiday designated as a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer to improve their communities.
Booker’s career has included service with the Legislative Research Commission, the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, and West Louisville FoodPort. While a representative in the Kentucky House, he helped pass bipartisan legislation to provide emergency medication to those who need it regardless of income and wrote the policy that forms the basis upon which voting rights were restored to more than 150,000 Kentuckians by Executive Order. He is the founder of the nonprofit advocacy group “Hood to the Holler.” His forthcoming book, From the Hood to the Holler: A Story of Separate Worlds, Shared Dreams, and the Fight for America’s Future (April 2022), describes his unlikely journey from a poor urban neighborhood in Louisville to the deepest reaches of Kentucky’s rural landscapes and the unexpected commonalities he found that might lead to solutions for the country as a whole.
Booker earned a B.S. in political science and a law degree from the University of Louisville.
The convocation is sponsored by Centre’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion with support from the president’s office. The Day of Service is sponsored by Centre’s Office of Civic & Community Engagement and the ODI.
