On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, an audience consisting of members of state and local government, as well as general community members, communed together during their day off from work and school to learn about the man behind the holiday. On Monday, Jan. 19th, the Town of Brookline MLK Celebration Committee hosted its annual MLK Day Celebration at the Coolidge Corner Theater.

The event opened with a welcome by Select Board Member Bernard Greene. Next, Brookline Poet Laureate Allison Adair recited and analyzed “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a Civil Rights anthem. Afterwards, Massachusetts Poet Laureate Regie Gibson presented a selection of his own poetry about key Civil Rights advocates, followed by Professor Noliwe Rooks, who presented on “Dr. King and the Power of Education: A Blueprint for Freedom.” Finally, the Hidden Brookline organization shared its research and findings on the local history of slavery in Brookline.

Brookline Select Board member Bernard Greene has served as the chair of the MLK Celebration Committee since joining the Select Board in 2016. Over the past ten years, he said, he and the committee have invested a significant amount of work in creating the programming for this annual event.

“We agreed on a mission for the committee, and that is to give us an understanding of MLK in the Civil Rights Movement that is helpful to people in terms of understanding and acting on the challenges we have today: not just looking at MLK as a great guy who had a dream, but actually talking about what King represented,” Greene said.

Brookline parent Karen Stensrude said events like these emphasize the true meaning behind MLK Day, and prevent the holiday from passing simply as a vacation from school and work.

“It’s really important to commemorate and hold a gathering space to have a collective experience of something that’s so powerful and meaningful, so it doesn’t just split away and become a superficial day off,” Stensrude said.

Massachusetts Poet Laureate Regie Gibson said the significance of the event has a lot to do with the community it engages and brings together.

“[The MLK Day Celebration] is a community event, and there’s so many people from the community that put it together, so it’s people working together to make something happen,” Gibson said. “The other thing about it is that we’re gathering in a space that is given to us by a local business. So I love the idea that we also have a business which is involved in doing the community, and not just taking from the community.”

Gibson has spoken at this event for nearly a decade. The three poems he presented highlighted three historical figures: abolitionist and suffragette Lucy Stone, abolitionist William Cooper Nell and civil rights advocate Martin Luther King.

“The Lucy Stone poem was probably written last year. The William Cooper Nell poem was written a few years back because I was in residence at the Museum of African American History. And for the Dr. King [poem], that was rewritten this year, but I did a version of it about two years ago,” Gibson said.

Stensrude said she found the event enlightening and moving, especially the poems written and presented by Gibson.

“I learned a lot, and I’m inspired. It’s wonderful to listen to the stories and the passion behind the knowledge and art that was shared in the form of the poems and the class lesson that was given about someone’s lived experience,” Stensrude said.

Greene said the programming at the event is important now, given the unstable political climate given the trend away from recognizing civil rights-related holidays at the national level.

“The very notion of MLK Day is under attack,” Greene said. “In a small, petty way, for example, the National Park Service was told not to give people free admission to parks during MLK Day as well as Juneteenth. That’s been a pattern over the past few years, as well as various other things that are going on that are an attempt to denigrate and eliminate the importance of historical events.”

Greene said events like these provide historical inspiration to persevere through difficult political times.

“It’s important for us to take lessons from Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement so that we can be courageous enough to stand up to the challenges we face,” Greene said.

Gibson said something he appreciates about the event is the idea that people gather to feel hope, an idea he alluded to in one of his poems.

“We yearly vigil here in order to fuel ourselves up, to remind ourselves of the best of what we can be and because it can get really lonely out there when we don’t know that other people are also working toward bringing about a better day,” Gibson said. “So this helps us to see each other in a community and that we’re all working toward a betterment. I think that gives us a strength that we wouldn’t normally have if we didn’t see other people doing the same thing.”