photo by: AP File

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, Aug. 28, 1963.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is just around the corner, and one message emerging locally and from an invited speaker is a call for sincere dialogue and doing the kind of work that the slain civil rights leader found essential to problem solving.

At the University of Kansas, the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging will welcome a national activist and scholar as part of its programming related to Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Smith College professor Loretta Ross will present an online lecture, “Calling In the Calling Out Culture,” at 11 a.m. Thursday via Zoom. Ross teaches courses about white supremacy, human rights and “calling out culture,” and advocates for respectful debate and productive conversations with others who hold differing opinions.

Those interested in attending the Zoom lecture can pre-register here. The event is open to community members.

The King holiday is officially observed on the third Monday in January, but events typically take place throughout the week to honor King, who was born on Jan. 15, 1929, and assassinated on April 4, 1968.

The significance of the day doesn’t come down to simply one man’s legacy, said Randal Jelks, professor of African and African American Studies and American Studies at KU. It’s about all the people — women, men, teenagers and children — who participated in the civil rights movement.

“You know, King accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the millions of Black Americans he became a voice to in the civil rights struggles,” Jelks said. “He would never claim to be the civil rights struggle himself, or that he was the impetus. He was just a 26-year-old caught up in the tides of history and decided to accept that. That’s a pretty remarkable thing.”

That’s what we should be taking away, Jelks said: that King’s voice represented the best of us and still represents creating an inclusive society in which all people can live, flourish and grow. Jelks said he takes the day to remember that and to think about the voices of the civil rights movement, both well-known and unknown.

It’s also an opportunity to remember how much King’s message of equality resonates with people, not just in America but around the world.

Jelks said this is a conversation he tries to have with KU students. Students come to the table with a diverse array of viewpoints and opinions, but Jelks tries to stress to them that they are all accountable for this era in democratic society. There’s plenty of room to disagree, but they have the responsibility to think about a challenging future and to inform their own perspectives, he said.

“I often like to explain that when you become a citizen of the United States, whether you’re a naturalized citizen, it’s like buying a house,” Jelks said. “When you buy a house, once you sign off on those papers and the roof starts to leak, it’s on you. Or you’ve got some structural problems, it’s on you. We are all born into these realities and we have to think about them, because now we own it.”

Approaching those challenges, he said, starts locally. Before coming to KU, Jelks worked at a smaller college and his students joined a housing campaign on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. They spent the day informing citizens about lead poisoning. That sort of grassroots advocacy, Jelks said, is how young people today can get involved in effecting change in the same way King sought to.

“We have to always work, at the very beginning, at the local level,” Jelks said. “And this is the lesson you learn from studying King. Bus segregation was a local issue. It was the local-est (sic) of issues. … We begin locally, and that’s really important. So wherever you are locally, you should be (looking) at the issues around you and ask questions.”

Those local issues then turn into national issues, with enough traction, as people rally around a cause in their own communities.

“I think it’s really, really crucial for us to continue to have dialogue,” Jelks said. “We may disagree. We don’t have to agree, but what we do have to do is come to the table and, in our best common interest, come up with solutions.”

Jelks, along with being a professor, is also an author and documentary film producer. His latest book, “Letters to Martin: Meditations on Democracy in Black America,” was published Jan. 11 and is framed as a series of letters to King in an attempt to provide inspiration to younger generations regarding contemporary political struggles. Jelks and fellow KU professor and Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Willmott will have a virtual conversation about the book, hosted by the Raven Book Store, at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Another annual MLK event is also set to take place next week. The Lawrence school district’s 2022 One Dream Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Lied Center, 1600 Stewart Drive. The gallery opens at 5:30 p.m. Masks are required and social distancing is encouraged. The school district will honor students, staff and community members with the MLK Heart of Service, Character, Dreamer’s and Champion of Equity Awards.

Other traditional KU events — such as the community breakfast, sponsored by the Jayhawk Breakfast Rotary Club, and the MLK March Across Campus — are not listed among the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging’s events for this year. Office staff was not available Friday afternoon when the Journal-World tried to confirm whether they are still taking place.