On January 15, in observance of Martin Luther King Day, Mr. Michael Scott, Director of the Central High School Band in Macon, GA, will deliver a spoken word performance of Senegalese poet and statesman Léopold Sédar Senghor’s poem “Elegy for Martin Luther King.” The reading will be accompanied by an original jazz composition by Dr. Christopher Schmitz of Mercer's Townsend School of Music, performed by the Mercer Jazz Ensemble under the direction of Dr. Monty Cole. Macon’s Hiyiya Dance Theater Inc, directed by Ms. Pilar Wilder Lowden, will perform an West African dance.

Senghor, the first black person to be elected to the French Academy and the first President of Senegal, wrote his narrative poem about King’s assassination in the days immediately following the event. The date of the assassination, April 4, 1968, was also the date of the Senegalese national holiday. 2018 will mark the 50 year anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death.