Martin Luther King Jr. Day recognized across Twin Cities

Slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was honored Monday with events across the Twin Cities, some of them reconvening in person for the first time since 2020.

Among them, General Mills and the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) hosted their annual MLK Breakfast celebration in Minneapolis, with Valerie Jarrett — a former senior adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama — as featured speaker. Jarrett, now chief executive officer of the Barack Obama Foundation, joined Minnesota attorney, legal and political analyst Abou Amara in a moderated conversation around the event theme “Keep Moving Forward.”

“I know the last two years have been hard years for the Twin Cities,” said UNCF President Michael Lomax, addressing attendees at the Minneapolis Convention Center. “I know they’ve been hard years for all of the people in this hall, including the leaders.”

Lomax recalled how King, during his lifetime, was “vilified throughout his ministry, and yet he stayed the course.”

The hybrid event, which General Mills and UNCF have held annually since 1991, was attended by Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and new Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt.

Sponsored by Target, Ecolab and 25 additional backers, the MLK Breakfast is considered one of the largest such gatherings in the nation and featured entertainment from the Minneapolis-based TKO Drumline and the KnockOut Dance Team, as well as the four-sibling family band Nunnabove. Net proceeds from the event support UNCF’s student scholarships in the Twin Cities.

Jarrett, a former chief of staff to former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, recalled interviewing Michelle Obama for a short-lived city hall job in the early 1990s and having to navigate the skepticism of her husband, a community organizer and Daley critic who would go on to become president of the United States.

Jarrett later served as the senior advisor to President Obama from 2009 to 2017, making her the longest serving senior advisor to a U.S. president in history. She oversaw the offices of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs and chaired the White House Council on Women and Girls, and currently serves as a senior distinguished fellow at the University of Chicago Law School and co-chair of the United State of Women.

Asked by Amara about violence and unrest in the Twin Cities following the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer in 2020, Jarrett noted King said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

“The world is watching, and has been watching, what is happening right here,” said Jarrett, adding that change is rarely a “lightning bolt” and requires humble patience and “passing the baton” from leader to leader and generation to generation.

“What happened, and has been happening in our country, is over that long arc,” she said. “The only way that change happens is when we the people demand that it happens.”

King, who was assassinated in 1968 at the age of 39, would have celebrated his 93rd birthday on Jan. 15. Martin Luther King Day was celebrated for the first time as a federal holiday on Jan. 20, 1986. By the year 2000, all 50 states had made the third Monday in January a paid state government holiday.

Also Monday, Walz and Flanagan were scheduled to host the 2023 MLK Day Celebration at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul. The free event was to be led by Chanda Smith Baker, chief impact officer with the Minneapolis Foundation, and Steve Grove, Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, and feature keynote speaker Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, a Ghanaian-born American activist and writer.

Parkview United Church of Christ in White Bear Lake held a community breakfast in conjunction with White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church and Interfaith Action of Greater St. Paul. The Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association in Minneapolis was scheduled to host live performing arts events from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., carried live on Facebook and YouTube.

South St. Paul Faith Communities and the city of South St. Paul were scheduled to host a celebratory event at 9 a.m. at the Wakota Ridge Campus. The Professional Diversity Network was scheduled to host an online career fair from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

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