Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Alex Guerrero

After a postponement, the 34th annual Martin Luther King Celebration is slated to take place Monday in the lecture hall at Riverland Community College.

The event will be from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Typically held on Martin Luther King Day in January, the event was held over Zoom last year.

“To me that wasn’t real satisfying,” said Mary Hinnenkamp, one of the organizers for the event. “This year we wanted to do it in-person, but when we looked at the COVID surge, and we talked to public health here in Freeborn County, they were not excited at all about us having an in-person event in the middle of January.”

Each year organizers focus on an important topic and get a speaker to talk about it. This year’s speaker will be Larry McDonough from the Housing Justice Center. McDonough is an expert in housing law.

“He is so articulate and so well-informed about housing issues, housing programs and just the gamut of what is involved,” she said. “What we’ve asked him to talk about is something more specific to Greater Minnesota.”

Hinnenkamp said there is a housing shortage and said it is hard for Albert Lea to grow when there isn’t housing.

The celebration was started by Community Action and the local YMCA, among others.

“King’s birthday was significant and we needed to do something locally to celebrate what he stood for and the connections between what he stood for and our own community,” she said.

Besides the presentation, MLK scholarships will also be awarded to high school students. Those scholarships are given to students who are involved in the community, plan to continue school and then contribute to the area.

Besides speaking, McDonough — a jazz pianist — will perform “We Shall Overcome,” and the Southwest Middle School choir will sing. Anyone attending will have to wear a mask.

Past events have touched on immigration policy and bullying in schools.

“The idea has always been [about] how this can impact our community and what we can do,” she said.