WNYC and the Apollo Theater present WNYC’s 14th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration, “The Strategic King: MLK’s Visionary Leadership,” as part of the Apollo’s Uptown Hall series.
This year’s event, co-hosted by WNYC's All Things Considered host Jami Floyd and All Of It host Alison Stewart, focuses on Dr. King and his colleagues’ skillful use of the media and politically strategic tactics to influence politicians and helped pass key legislation in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. We'll consider how those strategies continue to inform and inspire contemporary social justice movements, especially as some of those very protections are under attack today.
Featured guests include:
- Herb Boyd – Journalist, educator, and author
- Taylor Branch – Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian
- Rev. Canon Kelly Brown Douglas – Dean, Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary
- Jonathan Capehart – Washington Post Opinion Writer
- Dorothy Butler Gilliam – journalist
- Mary-Pat Hector – National Youth Director for National Action Network
- Khalil Gibran Muhammad – Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the Radcliffe Institute
- Rashad Robinson – President of Color Of Change
- Bakari Sellers – Former South Carolina State Representative, attorney, political commentator and politician
- Nancy Barnes – Senior Vice President of News and Editorial Director, NPR
The program is complemented by music and special spoken-word performances by artist and MacArthur Fellow Carrie Mae Weems, Pulitzer Prize-winner and U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, and playwright and producer Jessica Care Moore. WQXR’s Terrance McKnight will serve as Master of Ceremonies.
