Boston University and City of Boston Host Annual MLK Day Commemoration Amid Omicron Surge

BOSTON — July 22, 2026 — Boston University, the City of Boston, and the New England Conservatory marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January 2022 with a webinar-format commemoration at BU's Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, centered on King's 1967 book "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" Mayor Michelle Wu, in her first MLK Day observance as mayor, joined BU President Robert A. Brown, Provost Gene Morrison, and NEC President Andrea Kalin in remarks honoring Dr. King and Coretta Scott King. The event's substantive core was a panel moderated by BU Professor Celia Grundy, in which NAACP Boston branch representative Taneisha Sullivan warned that 19 states have passed 34 laws restricting voting access, argued that Massachusetts and other Democratic-led states must actively advance — not merely not suppress — voting rights, and cited King's formulation that "the inseparable twin of racial injustice is economic injustice." Jean-Luc Purit of the North American Indian Center of Boston delivered a land acknowledgment and noted that despite a Native American population of over 94,000 in Massachusetts, the state has zero indigenous representation on Beacon Hill.