Celebrate Black History Month at NYU with Year-Round Events

To honor Dr. King’s legacy, NYU hosts a number of special events during MLK Week. This year MLK Week runs from February 13 to 18 and centers on the parallels between Afrofuturism and the teachings of Dr. King. In fact, he once wrote, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Read on to learn about some of the week’s events.

This year’s university-wide event features a conversation with playwright, composer-lyricist, and NYU Tisch alumnus Michael R. Jackson (Tisch ’03, ’05). He is one of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2022. What’s more, Jackson is the writer and lyricist of the Broadway musical A Strange Loop. The musical won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical in 2020. It received 11 Tony Award nominations in 2022, taking home the prizes for Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical. Following the conversation with Jackson is the presentation of the 2023 MLK Humanitarian Award to Professor Michael Dinwiddie and the announcement for this year’s Dr. Patricia M. Carey Changemaker Award recipients.

This year MLK Week will kick off a with a special pre-week event: Culture Karaoke: Expression Across the Diaspora. It is organized by African Heritage Month and the Black Student Union. This free event will be held on Friday, February 10, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. (ET) in the Kimmel Center for University Life.

Then, on Monday, February 13, MLK Week is officially underway with an exploration of science, technology, and pop culture. Evolving Images of Blackness in STEM seeks to liberate us from popular portrayals and stereotypes associated with Black people and Black communities. This explorative event is organized by the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Furthermore, it will be held at MetroTech Center in the Tandon MakerSpace’s event space at 5:00 p.m. (ET).

The beginning of the week also includes the 16th annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Award Ceremony. This celebration recognizes NYU faculty members who exemplify Dr. King’s spirit through teaching excellence, social justice activism, and community leadership.

Midweek brings the Graduate Student Organization MLK Oratorical Contest. This is a virtual event featuring spoken word performances from graduate students across NYU. In fact, the performances focus on this year’s MLK Week theme: our collective liberation. In addition, the Silent Disco: Sights and Sounds of Afrofuturism will feature Afrofuturistic music from Black artists of past and present.

Before wrapping up the week with the university-wide event, the middle of the week marks a favorite NYU tradition, the MLK Day of Service: NYU Service Fair. Dr. King reminded us that anyone can—and should—engage in service to others. Hosted by NYU Service, students will be able to connect with nonprofits and community organizations. These institutions seek student interns and volunteers in areas including education inequality, immigration, houselessness, poverty, and prison reform.

The rest of February offers a diversity of programming to celebrate Black History Month at NYU and amplify Black voices. Here’s a sampling.

The NYU Metropolitan Center’s Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative invites white public school parents from across the city who are committed to becoming anti-racist to its From Integration to Anti-Racist Workshop Series. Participants will engage in instructive exercises, conversations, and lessons to learn how to build equitable, powerful, and multiracial parental communities in their schools. What’s more, the series kicks off in February and runs through June.

You can also pass by the Kimmel Windows to view The Black Civil War Soldier. Curated by Deborah Willis, chair of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts’ Department of Photography and Imaging and the author of the book by the same name, this exhibition seeks to engage a sense of activism and highlight the acts of courage by Black men and women during the Civil War. The portraits and ephemera are on display until March 1, 2023.

Next up: the NYU Percussion Ensemble Performance to Honor Black History Month. At this free, open-to-the-public event, the NYU Percussion Ensemble will present Tim Adams’ “8:46.” This piece is a part of the composer’s ongoing contribution to the Black Lives Matter movement. The performance will also feature the world premiere of Lenny White’s “The Magnificent Seven” and a rare percussion-ensemble arrangement of “Malletoba Spank” by Duke Ellington.

Additionally, NYU community members can participate in sessions and events to learn how to drive change in their own spheres. At Justice Zone students and staff learn research-based strategies to challenge their daily practices and act in solidarity with communities of color. And at Stay Woke and Meditate, participants can get a weekly dose of student-led meditation. This session focuses on centering the lives and lived experiences of students of color.

Even though Black History Month at NYU officially ends in March, there are many ways to consider, celebrate, and elevate Black history and Black voices year-round, from joining clubs and discussions to keeping up with ongoing research.