Bates MLK Day History and Keynotes

Each year, Bates students, faculty, staff, local community members, and campus visitors gather on MLK Day to examine contemporary human issues through the lens of King’s work and ideas, broadly defined.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Benjamin Mays, Bates Class of 1920.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with the man he called his “spiritual mentor and my intellectual father,” Benjamin E. Mays, Bates Class of 1920.

The format, an all-college gathering followed by a full day of talks, panels, presentation, performance, and film, was influenced by the unique circumstances surrounding the 1991 King Day observance.

On Jan. 16, 1991, the Persian Gulf War began, the U.S.’s first major armed conflict in a generation. Two days later, the Bates faculty voted to cancel classes on MLK Day — Monday, Jan. 21 — “in honor of and to reflect upon Dr. King’s contributions to world peace, and to reflect upon the issues of peace and justice in the Middle East,” in the words of Professor of Religion Marcus Bruce ’77.

An all-college convocation began the MLK Day programming, followed by a full day of events, many using King’s life and legacy as a means to understand the myriad issues at play, planned and deployed by an-hoc faculty committee.

Though the format we know today emerged in the 1990s, 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. By 1996, this now-familiar Monday format — morning convocation, including a keynote speaker, and a day of discussion in lieu of classes — was firmly in place.

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

List of MLK Keynote Speakers

2024

Bryant Terry, an award-winning chef, food justice activist, and critically acclaimed author.

2024 Schedule of Events

2023

Keith Hamilton Cobb, actor and playwright who wrote the award-winning play American Moor

2023 Schedule of Events

2022 (online)

Five-person panel of Maine-based thinkers, practitioners, and activists.

2022 Schedule of Events

2021 (online)

Angela Davis, author and scholar, and activist.

2021 Schedule of Events

2020

Jennifer Lynn Eberhardt, author of the 2019 book Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do and a psychology professor at Stanford.

2020 Schedule of Events

2019

Barbara Ransby (postponed to March 2019 due to weather), a Distinguished Professor of African American studies, gender and women’s studies, and history at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

2019 Schedule of Events

2018

Na’ilah Suad Nasir, education researcher and president of the Spencer Foundation.

2018 Schedule of Events

2017

Khalil Gibran Muhammad, author and Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.

2017 Schedule of Events

2016

William Jelani Cobb, staff writer for The New Yorker and a history professor and director of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut.

2016 Schedule of Events

2015

Peniel Joseph, professor at Tufts, author and authority on the Black Power movement. “They want an expansive vision of social, economic and political justice that connects democratic ideals to democratic reality.”

2015 Schedule of Events

2014

Gary Younge, English journalist and author The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Dream.

2014 Schedule of Events

2013

Anthea Butler, author, religious studies scholar and media commentator.

S2013 Schedule of Events

2012

Julian Agyeman, environmental policy expert.

2011

The Rev. James Lawson, an influential advocate of non-violent activism who worked closely with King in the 1950s and ’60s

2010

Barbara Savage, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Thought at the University of Pennsylvania.

2009

Melissa Harris-Lacewell, associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton.

2008

The Rev. Lawrence Edward Carter Jr., Morehouse College professor of religion.

2007

Cleveland Sellers, civil rights activist and historian.

2006

Sharon Harley, pioneer in the field of African American women’s history and chair of the Department of African American Studies, University of Maryland, College Park.

2005

The Rev. John Mendez, pastor of the Emmanuel Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, N.C., and the Winston-Salem Chronicle‘s 1994 Man of the Year.

2004

Alex Dupuy, professor of sociology and Latin American studies at Wesleyan University.

2003

Joanne Grant, award-winning filmmaker, a writer and veteran civil rights activist of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

2002

James H. Cone, America’s pre-eminent black theologian.

2001

Jualynne E. Dodson, associate professor of Afro-American studies and religious studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder; Joanne Bland, tour director of the National Voting Rights Museum; and the Rev. James Foster Reese, director emeritus of the racial ethnic ministry unit for the Presbyterian Church (USA).

2000

William R. Jones, philosopher, educator and minister.

1999

John Edgar Wideman, author and two-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award

1998

Henri F. Norris, attorney, activist, and founder of New Millenia Films; led effort to distribute the movie Follow Me Home.

1997

Charlayne Hunter-Gault, journalist.

1996

The first time since 1991 the faculty voted to cancel classes to devote the day to programming.

Clarence Page, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, author, and columnist.

1995

The centennial celebration of Benjamin Mays’ birth.

Andrew Young, civil rights activist, ambassador, Atlanta mayor.

1994

Roger Wilkins, commentator and journalist.

1993

Dorothy Butler Gilliam, columnist for The Washington Post.

1992

Julius L. Chambers, director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

1991

Donald W. Harward, president of Bates.

1990

Eleanor Holmes Norton, legal scholar and commentator.

Prior to 1990

Informal programming at Bates.