Cummins Rocky Mount To Sponsor City’s Annual MLK Unity Breakfast

Source: NBA / NBA

Cummins Rocky Mount Engine Plant presents and The Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission hosts the 37th annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Unity Breakfast at the Rocky Mount Event Center on Monday, Jan. 20. The public is invited to attend this free event that begins with breakfast at 7 a.m. followed by the program at 8 a.m. The theme for this year’s event is “Changing the Hearts and Minds of a Divided Nation.”

Co-hosted by event partner North Carolina Wesleyan University, the program will feature winning youth speeches from the Oratorical Competition, music and keynote speaker, Jaki Shelton Green.

Green is the ninth Poet Laureate of North Carolina, first African American and third woman to be appointed as the North Carolina Poet Laureate (2018) and was reappointed in 2021 for a second term by Governor Roy Cooper. She is a 2019 Academy of American Poet Laureate Fellow, 2014 NC Literary Hall of Fame Inductee, 2009 NC Piedmont Laureate appointee, and a 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature.

Her celebrated works include Dead on Arrival, Masks, Conjure Blues, Feeding the Light, and i want to undie you. Ms. Green’s artistic contributions extend beyond print, as seen in her long-play poetry album The River Speaks of Thirst(2020) and her collaborative performance with Flutronix and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 2022. She recently retired from teaching Documentary Poetry at the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies, Additionally, she was recognized on the Forbes Magazine 50 Over 50 Lifestyle List for 2022.

Ms. Green also leads transformative writing retreats for women through her organization, SistaWRITE, and serves as poetry editor for WALTER Magazine. She is currently the Poet Laureate in Residence at the North Carolina Museum of Art.