Award-Winning Author, Scholar Peniel E. Joseph named Keynote Speaker for 2025 Arlington MLK Advancing the Dream Gala
By Arlington Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Committee Inc.
The Arlington MLK Celebration Committee, Inc. announces award-winning author and scholar Peniel E. Joseph as the 2025 MLK Advancing the Dream Gala’s keynote speech.
The 2025 MLK Advancing the Dream Gala, which includes dinner, special tributes, entertainment and scholarship and award announcements, is set for 6:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 17, 2025, inside the University Center’s Bluebonnet Ballroom on The University of Texas at Arlington campus. The event is part of the annual Arlington Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Four-Day Celebration.
Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values, Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, and Distinguished Service Leadership Professor and professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. His research, teaching, and writing reside at the intersection of race, democracy, civil, and human rights at the local, national, and global levels. An internationally recognized scholar, author, speaker, and editor of seven award-winning books, most recently The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century. In 2022, he was named the grand prize winner of the 2022 Hamilton Book Award, the University of Texas at Austin’s highest research honor, for his book, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. This book served as the inspiration for the award-winning 8-part National Geographic series, “MLK/X.” Professor Joseph frequently comments on race, civil rights, and democracy in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Texas Monthly, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and as a contributor to NPR, C-SPAN, CNN, and the PBS NewsHour on issues related to American history and democracy.
The recipient of fellowships from Harvard University’s Hutchins Center and Charles Warren Center, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Ford Foundation, Dr. Joseph’s essays have appeared in The Journal of American History, The Chronicle Review, The New York Times, and the American Historical Review. Joseph has written hundreds of editorials and opinion essays in Newsweek, The Root, CNN.com, Reuters, and the Guardian. Dr. Joseph’s commentary has been featured on National Public Radio, CNN, The Colbert Report, PBS NewsHour, MSNBC, and C-SPAN. An elected Fellow of the Society of American Historians, he lives with his family in Austin, Texas.
Dr. Joseph’s eighth book, Freedom Season: How 1963 Transformed the Civil Rights Revolution will be published by Basic Books in May 2025.
Vince Sims, co-anchor and reporter for NBC 5 (KXAS), will serve as the MLK Advancing the Dream Gala emcee. Individual tickets or a sponsorship table for eight can be purchased at on the UTA Tickets website.
As one of the largest celebrations in the state, the Arlington Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Four-Day Celebration event attracts thousands of Arlington-area residents each year. The 2025 Celebration runs from Friday, Jan. 17 through Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. The theme for the 2025 festivities is “Advancing the Dream: Choosing Connection over Division.” Please visit the Arlington MLK website to learn more about the celebration, a schedule of events and sponsorship opportunities.
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