Events To Mark the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday
1/12/2011
The first public event of the weekend will be the Martin Luther King Holiday Gala at 7 p.m. on Saturday, January 15 in the State Theater of the Culture Center. To commemorate the Silver Anniversary of the West Virginia Martin Luther King Holiday Commission, the theme will be Reflection and Renewal.
An Ecumenical Commemoration and Celebration will be held at 10 a.m. at the Asbury United Methodist Church on 501 Elizabeth Street in Charleston. Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito and WV Governor Earl Ray Tomblin are expected to attend.
Following the church service, there will be a symbolic march to the capitol. At Noon on the North portico of the capitol building individuals will gather for the bell ringing.
The event on Monday, January 17 at 6 p.m. will take place on the West Virginia State University campus in the theater of the Davis Fine Arts Building. The “Experience the Power of the Dream” arts presentation will feature performances by The Kings River Worship Center, The Lighthouse Worship Center and the Institute Church of the Nazarene male chorus. Students from Stonewall Jackson Middle School and Dunbar Intermediate school will give recitations. Members of the WVSU faculty and staff will also take part. A reception will follow. Everyone is asked to bring non-perishable food items to be donated to Covenant House.
On Tuesday, January 18, the spring semester of classes begin on the WVSU campus. At 12:30 p.m. Greek organizations will hold a panel discussion in the Union explaining the origins of their sorority or fraternity and its connection to WVSU.
On the evening of the 18th, a presentation, "13 Lessons of West Virginia State University" will be held in the Union beginning at 6 p.m. A series of displays, each representing a decade of WVSU's 120 year history, will be featured. The thirteenth display will be the love story between wealthy plantation owner Samuel Cabell and Mary Barnes, the slave who became his wife. Their family settled on the land that later became the WVSU campus. The University has set aside the academic year from September 2010 to May 2011 to celebrate its 120th anniversary.
Events are planned by the West Virginia Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Commission and West Virginia State University. They are free and open to the public.