Colorado College is continuing its tradition of hosting a community-wide celebration in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., with 2018 being especially significant as it marks 50 years since King's assassination.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day kicks off at 8 a.m., Monday, Jan. 15 with the "All People's Breakfast" in Reid Arena in the El Pomar Sports Center, 44 W. Cache La Poudre St. This year's theme is "Living the Legacy: A Call to Action." The breakfast features "Reflections on the Promised Land" and exhibits from CC's own student art collective, Artists and Makers of Undying Nobility, titled "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", as well as an exhibit from Soka Gakkai International.

The breakfast also features the Women in Red gospel choir and hip-hop artist/activist Kevin Mitchell. Following the breakfast, "We are the Legacy," a community rally and march, will depart from the Earle Flagpole on Worner Quad at 10 a.m. and conclude in Acacia Park in downtown Colorado Springs. Tickets for the breakfast are $7 each, available at Worner Desk starting Jan. 8, with a limited number of free tickets available for students with a current CC ID.

The world-renowned Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble will wrap up the day's events at 7 p.m. in the Mohrman Theatre in Armstrong Hall, with special guests, the Colorado Springs Chapter Choir of the Gospel Music Workshop of America, also performing. A reception will follow.

The celebration continues the following week on Monday, Jan. 22, with the First Mondays talk marking the first day of the new semester and honoring the impact and continued relevance of King's legacy. Nikole Hannah-Jones, an award-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times Magazine, is the Block 5 First Mondays speaker and will deliver the Martin Luther King Jr. commemorative keynote address at 11:15 a.m. in the Kathryn Mohrman Theatre in Armstrong Hall, 14 E. Cache La Poudre St.

She has spent years chronicling the way official policy has created - and maintains - racial segregation in housing and schools. Her deeply personal reports on the black experience in America offer a compelling case for greater equity. Hannah-Jones, who was named a 2017 MacArthur Genius Grant Fellow, has written extensively on the history of racism, school re-segregation, and the disarray of hundreds of desegregation orders, as well as the decades-long failure of the federal government to enforce the landmark 1968 Fair Housing Act.

Her piece "Worlds Apart" in The New York Times Magazine won the 2017 National Magazine Award for "journalism that illuminates issues of national importance," as well as the Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism. In 2016, she was awarded a Peabody Award and George Polk Award for radio reporting for her "This American Life" story, "The Problem We All Live With." Hannah-Jones was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists, and was also named to The Root 100. She currently is writing a book on school segregation, titled "The Problem We All Live With."

All events are open to the public, and with the exception of the breakfast, all events are free.