Fort Collins to honor Martin Luther King Jr. with annual march, other activities

Fort Collins will honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a daylong celebration Monday, Jan. 16, including the traditional midday march from downtown Fort Collins to Colorado State University, where a formal program will be held.

Colorado State University, Front Range Community College and Poudre School District will all be observing the holiday with a day off from classes in honor of the slain civil rights leader. Federal, state, county and city government offices will also be closed for the day.

King, a Baptist minister and activist, was one of the most prominent leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. He promoted nonviolence and civil disobedience as forms of resistance to the discrimination Black Americans faced.

The theme of this year's Martin Luther King Jr. Day programming in Fort Collins is VOICE (Violence. Oppression. Isolation. Cannot. Endure.)

The day’s activities begin with a morning service project at 8 a.m. to assemble care packages at CSU’s Lory Student Center Theatre.

The march starts at 11 a.m. at Washington Park, 301 Maple St., in downtown Fort Collins. It follows an approximately 1.3-mile route from the park north to Cherry Street, west to Meldrum Street and south to the CSU campus, where a formal program will be held at the Lory Student Center Grand Ballroom, beginning about 12:45 p.m. About 1,500 people participated in the 2022 MLK Day march in Fort Collins.

A keynote speech by Denver poet and political activist JC Futrell, known by the stage name Panama Soweto, will follow welcome speeches from the presidents of CSU and Front Range Community College, Poudre School District Superintendent Brian Kingsley and Fort Collins Mayor Jeni Arndt.

Soweto’s grandfather, John W. Mosley, was the first Black athlete at CSU in 1939 and went on to become a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen — a decorated all-Black squadron of fighter pilots — in World War II. Mosley later became an educator and was a strong proponent of equality in the nation’s classrooms.

More:CSU honors barrier-breaking alum John Mosley

Soweto played a key role in the grassroots movement to remove the name of former Denver Mayor Benjamin Stapleton from a Denver neighborhood because of Stapleton’s membership in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

Free transportation from the Lory Student Center Transit Lane D to the Downtown Transit Center will be available from 9:45 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Free parking downtown is available in the downtown parking structure at the corner of Laporte Avenue and Mason Street.

Front Range hosts lunchtime speaker

Front Range Community College has a lunchtime program planned in honor of King from 11 a.m. to noon Wednesday, Jan. 18, on the East Conference Room of the Longs Peak Center on its Larimer County Campus, 4616 S. Shields St. Joe Buckner, a local entrepreneur and businessman who grew up in Fort Collins and founded Beautifully Savage Boxing Gym, will speak about his life experiences and ways to draw inspiration from King to help make the community a better place for everyone.

A free lunch for all participants will follow.

Learn more about King

Poudre River Public Library District has books by and about King and those inspired by his work in civil rights and social justice on display in each of its libraries this month, and the city of Fort Collins is promoting a website (www.fcgov.com/historicpreservation/blackfortcollins) that tells the story of Black/African Americans in the community from the 1880s through the 1970s.

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Fort Collins Martin Luther King Jr. Day activities: Annual march Monday