The California African American Museum invites families to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day immersed in music, culture, and community. This year’s virtual festival highlights MLK’s dedication to labor and workers’ rights, and how important that fight remains today.

Schedule of Virtual Activities

10am Pacific (12noon Central, 1pm Eastern)
Musical Welcome with members of the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles, the largest majority Black orchestra in America.

11am Pacific (1pm Central, 2pm Eastern)
King Study Group
The King Study Group engages with King’s speech in support of Memphis Sanitation Workers. Delivered the day before he was assassinated in 1968, this speech is commonly known by the theme in its concluding paragraph: "I've been to the mountaintop." 

1pm Pacific (3pm Central, 4pm Eastern)
Black Workers and Social Justice: From Memphis, 1968, to Today
The labor movement was—and remains—essential to the struggle for racial equity and civil rights. King's final campaign was undertaken to support striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. A distinguished panel discusses the struggle in Memphis, the right to strike, and Black labor's role in the California economy and in today's movement for social change.  

2:30pm Pacific (4:30pm Central, 5:30pm Eastern)
Family Storytime and Poetry Workshop
 Author Alice Faye Duncan reads excerpts from her children's book, Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop: The Sanitation Strike of 1968, followed by a haiku writing workshop.