Centered on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Bates is a community-wide opportunity to discuss, teach, and reflect on the legacy of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.

Each year, Bates students, faculty, staff, local community members, and campus visitors gather to examine contemporary human issues through the lens of King’s work and ideas, broadly defined. It is a full day of thought, reflection, and aspiration for the entire community. 

Today’s format, an all-college gathering followed by a full day of talks, panels, presentation, performance, and film, emerged in the 1990s, but Bates has observed King’s birthday since the 1980s.

In 1986, the first year the federal holiday was observed, Bates welcomed Odella Williamson, a former NAACP chapter leader, to campus.

In 2003–04, the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day Planning Committee became a standing committee of the faculty.