Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to be remembered during Jan. 22 event

Hamline University invites the public to a celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life, philosophy, and legacy on Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 4 p.m. in Sundin Music Hall (1531 Hewitt Ave.). This year’s event will reflect on Dr. King’s 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

The commemoration will feature President Linda N. Hanson as well as student, faculty, and staff speakers, musical selections from the Hamline University Gospel Choir, a performance from local dancer Alanna Morris (TU Dance), and a charge to the university community delivered by Keyonis Johnson (’14), vice-president of Hamline’s student group PRIDE Black Student Alliance.

This annual celebration is sponsored by Hamline’s Hedgeman Center for Student Diversity Initiatives and Programs. The Hedgeman Center helps create and sustain an inclusive community that appreciates, celebrates, and advances student and campus diversity at Hamline University. The center supports, empowers, and promotes the success of all students with particular attention to U.S. students of color, queer students, and others from historically marginalized backgrounds.

Creativity and innovation in teaching and learning are the hallmark of Hamline University—home to more than 5,000 undergraduate, graduate, and law students. At Hamline, students collaborate with professors invested in their success. They are challenged in and out of the classroom to create and apply knowledge in local and global contexts, while cultivating an ethic of civic responsibility, social justice, and inclusive leadership and service.

Hamline is the top-ranked university of its class in Minnesota, according to U.S. News & World Report. Founded in 1854, Hamline also is Minnesota’s first university and among the first coeducational institutions in the nation.