‘Where do we go from here?’ A question for Lexington from MLK on MLK Day.

Organizers of Lexington’s annual Martin Luther King Jr Celebration had been thrilled about their keynote speaker for the 2025 festivities: Renowned poet and activist Nikki Giovanni was coming to Lexington to speak and hold a conversation with journalist Renee Shaw.

So Giovanni’s death on Dec. 9 threw the organizing committee into both sadness and confusion. Luckily, they found a replacement in Nyle Fort, a minister, activist and professor at Columbia University.

Fort earned his B.A. from Morehouse College, Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and Ph.D. in Religion and Interdisciplinary Humanities from Princeton University. He studies oppression and resistance, community building and world transformation. Fort’s writing is featured in The Guardian, The Boston Globe, The New York Magazine, Socialism and Democracy, Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy and There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis.

The theme for this year’s program is “Where Do We Go From Here?,” a nod to Dr. King’s final book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?” originally published in 1967.

Organizer DeBraun Thomas said he wants the event to kick off a community-wide question about where we go from here.

“I truly believe that we already have the answers within our community, we can choose how to move forward and choose to do so by leading with love and light,” Thomas said. “In the book King said, ‘a society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness—justice.’ Whether it is chaos or community, it is on us to choose where we go from here.”

MLK Day events:

ABL Foundation Unity Breakfast: 8 a.m. at Central Bank Center.

A signature event now in its 30th year, the breakfast will host various speakers and programming. For tickets, go to https://ablfoundationky.com/unity-breakfast/.

Freedom March: 1-2pm starting at Central Bank Center and going around downtown.

2025 Martin Luther King Commemorative Program: 2-3:30pm

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Nyle Fort

Emcee: Christian Motley

Musical Performance: First Baptist Bracktown Praise Team

DJ Always (Albert Shumake)

The program will feature a tribute to Nikki Giovanni.