Keynote Speaker, Martin Luther King, Jr. Unity Breakfast

The Martin Luther King Jr. Commission hosts the 37th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Breakfast, featuring keynote speaker Jaki Shelton Green, ninth Poet Laureate of North Carolina. Ms. Green is the first African American and third woman to be appointed as the North Carolina Poet Laureate (2018) and was reappointed in 2021 for a second term by Governor Roy Cooper. She is a 2019 Academy of American Poet Laureate Fellow, 2014 NC Literary Hall of Fame Inductee, 2009 NC Piedmont Laureate appointee, and a 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature.