The Palaeopitus Senior Society will host an event, titled "I Have A Dream for Dartmouth," Tuesday evening centered on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy.
The event will include sociology professor Marc Dixon, MALS professor Julia Rabig and assistant chaplain Kurt Nelson as speaker according to Palaeopitus member Kip Dooley '12.
This year's event is a departure from Palaeopitus's past events that focused on students' hopes for Dartmouth in the coming years.
"We decided on the topic because the Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration is a big event every year, and we felt there aren't a whole lot of events at Dartmouth where students look at his life and work and how that is portrayed today through a critical perspective," Dooley said.
Dooley said he hopes the event will encourage discussion on campus about the continuing effort of civil rights.
"We're hoping the event will help make the connection between the civil rights movement and other civil rights movements today like Occupy," he said, emphasizing that the civil rights movement is not a "closed book."
Dooley is a member of The Dartmouth Staff.
"Lifted: A Celebration of Unity and Song," a student performance showcase, was held in Collis Common Ground last Friday as part of the ongoing celebrations, yielding a large and diverse audience, according to Monte Reed '12, who performed at the showcase.
Reed sang about LGBT equality, which he said parallels King's values of social justice.
Anna Winham '14 performed at Lifted with the Soul Scribes, delivering a poem that discussed "invisible oppression." She related King's values to other, more current social movements.
"To me, an important part about MLK Day is acknowledging what he did in his later years he actually was very anti-war and anti-capitalist," Winham said.
She related these values to the Occupy movement, which she said is "indebted" to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dartmouth's peer institutions, including Harvard University, Brown University and Princeton University, devote less time than the College to Martin Luther King, Jr. commemorations, often only holding one lecture, according to their websites.
Reed said he believed Dartmouth's dedication to the issue of social justice was shown in the extent of events hosted on campus.
"I think Dartmouth as an institution expresses social equality in a variety of ways such as through financial aid," he said, linking Dartmouth's vision with many of King's values.
Alpha Kappa Alpha, the College's historically black sorority, will host a dinner discussion Monday evening featuring African and African-American studies professor Reena Goldthree that will focus on the "Talented Tenth."
The "Talented Tenth" is a term "used to describe African-American leaders in the early 20th century," AKA member Chinedu Udeh '12 said in an email to The Dartmouth. "Specifically, [W.E.B.] Du Bois uses the term to describe the likelihood that one in every 10 African-Americans could become a leader of the race through education."
Udeh said the purpose of the discussion is to share a "vision of leadership as we continue to celebrate the contributions of a great man in our nation's history."
The ongoing celebrations of Martin Luther King, Jr. encourage students to evaluate society's progress in realizing King's dream for the United States, she said.
Staff writer Madeline Zeiss contributed reporting to this article.
