At the start of every Spring semester we come together as a community to honor the civil rights legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This year’s MLK Commemoration will be held  on February 15, from 12:15 pm to 1:15 pm in Crowell Concert Hall, with a reception to follow in the Malcolm-X House.  This year, on the 50th anniversary of King’s death, our keynote speaker will be the CEO and Founder of Joi Unlimited Coaching & Consulting and the Orange Method, Dr. Joi Lewis.  Dr. Joi completed her doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania, was a Bush Fellow, conducted research in South Africa, and had a 20+ year career in higher education working as a Dean of Students and Vice Provost, a Vice President of Student Affairs and Chief Diversity Officer, and as faculty.   

Dr. Joi’s talk is entitled “From Hollering to Healing: Black to the Future.”  Utilizing the Orange Method framework, which is grounded in the deep concept of healing justice to invite, inspire, explore, and unpack the practice of radical self-care as source, site, and agency tool for Black Liberation and Freedom, which is in fact liberation for us all; she will use poetry, song, and stories to illuminate how individuals and institutions transform and move towards true liberation, even against the backdrop of racism and oppression-induced toxic stress and trauma.

She will invite us to draw on the wisdom of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, other amazing activists, and the community to co-create a blueprint for wellness: healthy boundaries, falling in love with our beauty, and healthy expressions of grief, pain and joy that allow us to heal and fall in love with our community and ourselves more deeply—or perhaps for the first time. Despite oppressive socio-political realities, we will encourage ourselves to exercise our agency as US citizens to redefine what has been given to us, and in the process exercise our right and model what it means to be free. The call for Black Agency: Finding Freedom offers us a start, one that is accessible to every human being right where you are; we move from: “Hollering to Healing.”

If you have any questions about the event, please don’t hesitate to contact Demetrius Colvin at dcolvin@wesleyan.edu.