by Jameelah Mullen
January 15, 2026
The Georgetown College-produced occasion is shifting to a different historic venue in Washington, D.C.
Let Freedom Ring!, the annual live performance celebrating the lifetime of Martin Luther King Jr., has been a Kennedy Heart custom for greater than 20 years, however this 12 months, the occasion can have a brand new house.
Live performance organizers mentioned they’re shifting the present to D.C.’s Howard Theatre to save cash. However some assist the change for causes unrelated to funds.
Marc Bamuthi Joseph, the Kennedy Heart’s former creative director, expressed assist for the transfer, noting that Martin Luther King Jr.’s mission doesn’t align with that of the present presidential administration.
“I’d a lot slightly that all of us be spared the hypocrisy of celebrating a person who not solely fought for justice but in addition articulated the case for fairness maybe higher than anybody in American historical past—when the official place of this administration is an anti-equity stance,” Joseph, who was abruptly fired from his earlier function in March 2025, instructed NPR.
The termination adopted President Donald Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Heart, throughout which he named himself chair and dismissed a lot of the board of trustees. The president criticized previous Kennedy Heart occasions, calling them “woke,” and issued an government order demanding an finish to range in cultural programming.
This live performance’s transfer follows a sequence of cancellations and relocations. The Washington Nationwide Opera introduced it would relocate its performances from the Kennedy Heart, ending a 50‑12 months run there. Moreover, jazz musician Chuck Redd, who has hosted the Vacation Jazz Jams there since 2006, canceled his Christmas Eve efficiency after the Trump administration renamed the ability the “Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Heart for the Performing Arts.”
Composer Nolan Williams Jr., who has served as Let Freedom Ring‘s music producer since 2003, wrote a music for this 12 months’s occasion known as “Simply Like Selma,” impressed by King’s well-known quote: “The arc of the ethical universe is lengthy, nevertheless it bends towards justice.”
Rapper and actor Widespread will headline this 12 months’s present, which is able to characteristic the Missionary Kings of Concord of the United Home of Prayer for All Folks’s Anacostia congregation.
The Let Freedom Ring! live performance for MLK Day will happen Monday, Jan. 19 at 6 p.m.
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