MLK Symposium: A Week of Learning and Listening
11th graders visited various senior centers across New York City to deliver care kits and spend some time crafting, chatting, and singing with elderly New Yorkers.
Media provided by Antonella Dominguez
This year’s keynote speaker, Spelman professor Shola Lynch, was introduced by Sydney Gardiner, GCS Class of 2025 and future Spelman graduate.
Media provided by Antonella Dominguez
This year, Grace’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium celebrated performance, community, and experience. The student rock-band performances shook the gymnasium floor. Dance numbers from ensembles of all ages elicited awe from both students and faculty. Guest speakers offered invaluable insights drawn from their unique experiences. The many positive sentiments generated by only three short days show how successful the MLK Symposium is.
MLK Week kicked off on Wednesday, January 21, 2026, with a foreword at Chapel, where students read quotations from the works of Martin Luther King Jr., and Grace Notes sang the classic “This Little Light of Mine” with a modern twist. Afterwards, students headed back to the high school campus for an official introduction. Even at 10:00 in the morning, this introduction was far from drowsy.
Grace’s High School Rock bands gave thrilling performances intermittently as Antonella Dominguez and Jean-Robert Andre described the week’s logistics. Grace Dance Company collaborated with Jazz Ensemble and Grace Notes to perform a spinning, sequined set to Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good.” The routine was so powerful that you could feel the bass and the drums through the floor as you were mesmerized by the extravaganza of visuals and sound. The Middle School Dance Ensemble even attended the session, performing a routine called “The Legacy of a Dream.”
“You are the center of your own experience,” emphasized Ms. Dominguez, before releasing students to attend their first seminar.
The range of Seminar topics offered was broad: from Bachata dance lessons to discussions on AI, to chocolate as an exploitative industry, MLK Symposium offered almost 80 sessions across two days.
Will N. ‘26’s MLK experience illustrates how diverse the Symposium’s diverse offerings are, even on a single topic: food. He spent his MLK week immersing himself in seminars about Colombian, Venezuelan, and Mexican cuisines. He adds that he “also really enjoyed the service day. It was interesting to see how many organizations there are out there dedicated to helping people.” For service day, Grace seniors split up to visit and deliver food to various pantries around the city.
Many other Grace students love MLK Symposium Week. For Arianna A.J. ‘26, her favorite part was attending student-led sessions. “I think it’s a really great way for people to learn new topics and for others to share what they’re interested in. I was sick on the initial sign–up day and didn’t get my first choices, but I still really enjoyed everything I attended. I think it’s really important to expand your horizons and learn about things you don’t necessarily know.” Arianna attended workshops on flagging and cabaret in the Weimar Republic, amongst others.
This year’s MLK Symposium Guest Speaker stepped straight out of the Hollywood scene to speak to the high school about the power of sharing your voice. Professor Shola Ann Lynch is an award-winning TV documentarian, a profession she has pursued for 30 years. She is best known for her documentary, Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, about Angela Davis and the civil rights movement. While she is also teaching at Spelman College in Atlanta, GA, she is currently working on a docuseries called #1 on the Callsheet, which highlights the unique experiences of Black Hollywood stars.
Lynch described her career path and how she didn’t always know she wanted to be a documentarian. She began as a film and media curator before taking a job as a researcher for documentarian Ken Burns. “I chose to challenge myself,” she said about her decision to start making her own films. “I didn’t see stories about Black women,” she noted, and as a documentarian, she knew it was her job to tell the stories that no one else was telling.
Lynch found her story while listening to National Public Radio. NPR announced the birthday of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, and in 1972, the first Black woman to run for president. At one point, Chisholm was a household name, but now, it seemed to Lynch that people had completely forgotten just how significant her campaign was. Lynch decided that she didn’t know enough about Chisholm, so she made it her mission to find out everything she could. She ultimately produced Chisholm ‘72 — Unbought & Unbossed, a documentary that told a story too important for any of us to forget.
Upon closer inspection, Lynch’s work was a large-scale professional version of what many Grace students did for their MLK Symposium presentations. She found a topic she was passionate about, still had a lot to learn about, researched, and then presented.
Moreover, her words were a powerful addition to the messages of the MLK Symposium. As a documentarian, her goal is to raise awareness about the areas of the world that still need improvement. “We always think of history as something that has happened in the past,” she said. She reminded us that “the past” wasn’t very long ago.
The final day of the MLK Symposium was dedicated to service. 9th-, 10th-, and 12th-graders prepared and delivered meals for non-profit organizations such as Grassroots Grocery and the Tacombi Foundation. Juniors prepared care kits for seniors and delivered them to senior centers across the city. Many students also described the Friday service day as their favorite part of the week. “The MLK Symposium was a good reflection and callback to the importance of service,” said Anaika V. ‘27, who prepped care bags and visited a senior center on her service day. Sebastian H. ‘29 prepared food for Grassroots Grocery’s food distribution. Thinking back to the experience, he reminisced that, “it felt good to help people, and I was glad that Grace gave me the opportunity to do so.”
Ms. Dominguez reflected upon the success of the MLK Symposium. “Every year we try to incorporate the feedback we get from the year before, and this year I think we took a lot of swings, especially with house meetings and more student operations. I think these big pieces came out successfully.” Looking forward to next year, she mentioned that she would love to see more student involvement and service at the lower school.
The MLK Symposium is an important opportunity for Grace students to connect with their community. This year, they used the time to the fullest, learning from and listening to those who had something to teach them.
Caitlin L. ‘27 is a staff writer for the Grace Gazette.