People from throughout the greater Madison community and beyond are invited to enjoy a wonderful meal with friends in Dr. Martin Luther King’s spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood at the 35th annual MLK Free Community Dinner on Friday, Jan. 16 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Gordon Dining & Event Center.
“The MLK Free Community Dinner is just a great opportunity to connect. There will be no long speeches … no big programs. It’s just coming together for a meal. I feel like I get to see a lot of people at this event that I don’t see very often …. maybe I only see them once a year,” Ed Lee, co-chair of this year’s King Coalition, tells Madison365. “It’s a great kick-off to all of the MLK events.”
There are a host of events scheduled in Madison to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. coming up this weekend and on Monday, but it will all get started with fellowship and food in downtown Madison this Friday at the annual MLK Free Community Dinner. “This is a long-standing event here in the Madison community and it’s all about bringing the community together,” Lee says.
Dinner will be served buffet style and will include fried and baked chicken, mac n’ cheese, mashed potatoes and gravy, vegetables, sweet potato pie, and more.
The annual MLK Free Community Dinner is hosted by the King Coalition, which aims to “bring people from all walks of life together in the spirit of true brotherhood and sisterhood to commemorate the life and accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King, the renowned leader of the civil rights movement.”
“In the early years, for the MLK Free Community Dinner, they used to collect all the donated food. And all of the volunteers would wrap up stuff, and they would cook the food, and it was held at a church in downtown Madison,” Lee remembers.
“The move to Gordon Common certainly simplified life a lot,” he adds. “They are able to cook all of the food. All we do is help clean up the dishes. The space is really nice.”
The Madison Music Makers, a longstanding program for young people that offers music instruction and performance opportunities to Madison’s youth in violin, viola, cello, piano, guitar, percussion, and music theory, regardless of ability to pay, will once again be performing for the crowd at the event.
“We’re excited to have the Music Makers at the event this year again,” Lee says. “They always add a little bit of nice, youthful entertainment.”
Lee says that he first joined the King Coalition in 1999. Lee and Mona Adams Winston were co-chairs of the King Coalition for many years where they helped organize many of the MLK events, including the Free Community Dinner. Since then, Dr. Gloria Hawkins and Lee have been co-chairs of the King Coalition for about two decades.
(Photo by David Dahmer)
Lee says he hopes the turnout is great this year despite the tense current political climate due to the intensifying raids targeting immigrants led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “It feels like a weird year in just the way I feel like everything that certainly the King Coalition has stood for, and certainly the kinds of things that Dr King fought for, are under assault in ways that I would have never honestly, maybe naively, imagined possible,” Lee says.
“In that regard, I wonder how the events are going to be received this year, right? Are people going to want to come out, or are people going to be afraid to come out?” he adds.
The annual MLK Free Community Dinner is free and open to the community. Food will be served from 4:30 p.m.-7 p.m. Shuttles will run to pick up people from the YWCA Madison and the men’s shelter on the East Side.
The UW Gordon Dining & Event Center is located at 770 W Dayton Street. The MLK Free Community Dinner is just the kick-off to a busy MLK weekend that will culminate with the 41st Annual Madison & Dane County MLK Day Observance on Monday night.
