Our theme for this year's Poster Exhibition, "Living the Dream," relates to Dr. King’s dream of the Beloved Community.

The program took place Monday January 15 in City Council Chambers, with Mayor Justin Wilson as the keynote speaker. The poster can be viewed online and, through the end of February, in the Vola Lawson Lobby at City Hall.

View the Posters

The Alexandria Black History Museum with the Office of Historic Alexandria sponsors an annual Student Poster Exhibition for Alexandria City Public School students, grades 2-5.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education, and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits…
 

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Acceptance speech at the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony
December 10, 1964 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta Georgia. He attended Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University. He received his Ph.D. in 1953. In Boston, Dr. King met Coretta Scott whom he married on June 18, 1953. Dr. They had four children, two girls and two boys.

Following in the footsteps of his grandfather and father, Martin Luther King, Jr. became a minister. In 1954, he became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama and joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a well-respected civil rights organization.

Dr. King was determined to end the discrimination faced by African Americans. As a result of racial segregation, African Americans in many parts of the United States could not be educated, eat, shop or use the same facilities that whites could. Dr. King and many other Americans, both black and white, risked their lives to end this inequality. Dr. King organized boycotts, marches and other forms of peaceful and non-violent protests to help African Americans gain equality. In 1957, Dr. King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to promote the civil rights movement.

In 1963, Dr. King was named Man of Year by Time Magazine. In 1964, he became the youngest man (at 35) to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. His legacy lives on in his speeches and in the many people, all over the world, who work to make their communities a better place.

There is so much more to learn about Martin Luther King, Jr.  

Websites 

• Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial 
• Library of Congress: I Have a Dream, and Letter from the Birmingham Jail 

• Short Documentary of the “I Have a Dream Speech” 

• Roundtable with John Lewis and President Barack Obama remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  
• Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech 
• The Official Website of the Nobel Prize 
• Voicethread video 

Books 

Elementary School:

• As Good as Anybody: Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom, by Richardson Michelson (2008)

• Martin’s Big Words—The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., by Doreen Rapport (2001)

Middle School:  

• Who was Martin Luther King, Jr.? by Bonnie Bader and Who HQ (2007)
• Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop: The Sanitation Strike of 1968, by Alice Fay Duncan (2018)

High School:

• Dear Martin, by Nic Stone (2017)

• The Alexandria Black History Museum   
• The Alexandria City Public Schools 

Our theme this year was: "It Starts with Me! Creating Martin Luther King, Jr's Beloved Community." The children learned about Dr. King's vision of creating a world free of racism, injustice, poverty, hunger and homelessness and were challenged to make art that would show what they could do to make the world a better place.

The student posters were on display in the Vola Lawson Lobby of City Hall, 301 King Street.

The 2022 poster theme is "Celebrate Juneteenth, Celebrate Freedom." We honor the newest federal holiday by creating art inspired by Juneteenth, June 19, 1865, the day the U.S. Army marched into in Galveston, Texas, and proclaimed all enslaved people were free. The promise of freedom held out the hope of self-determination, educational opportunities, and full rights of citizenship; the freedom to be you and have control over your body and your own life.

The Alexandria City Public Schools provided guidance to teachers, parents and students on how to submit the artwork.

Learn about Juneteenth: A Time of Reflection and Rejoicing.

View a slideshow of the students' posters, and download your favorites, or watch the video below.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Poster Exhibition 2021
The 2021 poster theme, "Creating a Hopeful World," comes from a quote from another Civil Rights icon, John Lewis. View a slideshow of the 2021 students' posters and download your favorites, or watch a video.