Griot Newsletter: January 19, 2026

Dear Griot Friends and Family,

We write to wish you all a thoughtful and peaceful Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in this surreal, dystopian moment in 2026. Bucknell’s MLK Week Committee has organized and coordinated a series of events that will occur over the next two weeks, beginning TODAY, January 19th, with a showing, on the big screen at the Campus Theatre at 2pm (doors open at 1:30), of Dr. King giving his speech The Time Is Always Right to Do Right.*

Bucknell University’s 2026 MLK Week theme, The Time Is Always Right to Do Right, is a call to contemplate the messages in Dr. King’s speech and underscores the enduring urgency of Dr. King’s call to ethical action. This phrase was used in his Commencement Address at Oberlin College on June 14, 1965, titled Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, in which he argued against passively waiting for justice and emphasized the immediate imperative to stand for what is right. The 2026 theme aims to challenge our community to attend to King’s calls to reflect on and actively work toward a more just and equitable world – one that includes rather than excludes people – at this moment in time, recognizing that inaction is never a neutral stance.

Our Griot Spring Speaker and Artists Series will begin February 4 and continue to contemplate justice and freedom with Dr. Edda Fields-Black (Carnegie Mellon-University) who will discuss her research on the Freedom Seekers of the Combahee River Raid which she detailed in her groundbreaking book, COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War. The book won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History and the 2025 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. A direct descendant of a soldier who fought in the raid, Fields-Black unveils Tubman’s command of spies and pilots and intelligence gathered from freedom seekers, which led to a raid that liberated 756 enslaved people from bondage on seven rice plantations. We look forward to seeing you there.

*Variations of these words appear in many of Dr. King’s other speeches and writings.

• The time is always ripe to do right. (Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963)
• The time is always right to do right. (The Other America, Stanford, 1967)

Please join us for as many of the 2026 MLK Week events as you are able!

The Time Is Always Right to Do Right

Bucknell University’s 2026 MLK Week theme, The Time Is Always Right to Do Right, underscores the enduring urgency of Dr. King’s call to ethical action. This phrase was used in his Commencement Address at Oberlin College on June 14, 1965, titled Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, in which he argued against passively waiting for justice and emphasized the immediate imperative to stand for what is right. The 2026 theme aims to challenge our community to attend to King’s calls to reflect on and actively work toward a more just and equitable world at this moment in time, recognizing that inaction is never a neutral stance.

*Variations of these words appear in many of Dr. King’s other speeches and writings.
The time is always right to do right. (The Other America, Stanford, 1967)
The time is always ripe to do right. (Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963)

Please see The MLK Week website or email mlkweek@bucknell.edu for more details.