The Martin Luther King, Jr. Committee of Santa Barbara held its 16th annual program honoring Dr. King on Monday at the Arlington Theatre.
This year’s theme for the event surrounded the King’s quote “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others.’”
Though the annual Unity March up State Street was canceled due to the rain, programming at Arlington Theater was still held.
“As of Saturday, I wasn’t even sure this program would be on,” said E. onja Brown, President of the Martin Luther King Jr. Committee of Santa Barbara.
According to Brown, planning the annual celebration is a 10-month process.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech given by Dr. King, according to Brown.
The program featured the David Gorospe Jazz group, which performed in the foyer of the Arlington Theatre.
Following an opening sermon by the Rev. Roderick Murray board member of the Martin Luther King Jr. Committee and pastor of New Friendship Baptist Church, singers Miriam Dance, Shirley Hammons and Michelle Jarvis took to the stage to lead the audience in the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known as the Black National Anthem.
Keynote speaker Daina Ramey Berry, the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at UCSB, shared about Dr. King’s legacy.
Berry, a historian, said King’s question about what you are doing for others should have an easy answer.
“What are you doing for others? What does it mean to serve others? It’s service in a spiritual sense — giving to other people, putting people’s needs first, prioritizing thinking about other people,” she said when discussing her work earlier this month.
“King modeled servant leadership and humility as qualities we should all embrace, and I think we would be a much more harmonious society as a result,” she said.
Awardees of the Martin Luther King Jr. Committee Essay and Poetry Awards Program were announced in both the age 6 to 12 and 13 to 18 categories.
Several local elected officials attended and spoke at Monday’s even,t including Congressman Salud Carbajal, D-Santa Barbara.
He thanked people who have been working to repair and re-open roads and assisting those in need during the recent rainstorms in Santa Barbara County.
“These efforts are a testament to this year’s theme, life’s most persistent and urgent question: ‘What are you doing for others?’” Carbajal said. “Our community is very familiar with the power of service on behalf of others.”
Carbajal mentioned several steps towards civil rights that have taken place at the federal level, such as the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, which designates lynching as a federal crime, and Juneteenth — commemorating the end of slavery in the United States — being recognized as a national holiday.
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Committee of Santa Barbara has more information on the organization and upcoming events on its website.