Colorado State University is partnering with the City of Fort Collins, Poudre School District and Front Range Community College to sponsor the annual community-building event. This year’s march will be a particularly powerful in-person experience after being held virtually last year due to the pandemic.
The Jan. 17 celebration begins at 11 a.m. at Washington Park with opening remarks by Carlotta Lanier, one of the students in the “Little Rock Nine,” whom Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus prevented from enrolling in racially segregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957 until an intervention by President Dwight Eisenhower and local community leaders.
A new march route will take participants past homes where some of the community’s first African Americans lived, and, as in past years, the march will end at CSU’s Lory Student Center ballrooms with a special program.
As part of the celebration, University Housing and the Black/African American Cultural Center are again partnering to collect toiletry items for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Service Event, benefitting Homeward Alliance, a local organization that supports those experiencing homelessness.
