Antioch College’s Coretta Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom will host a banquet and fundraiser later this month in Springfield, aiming to both honor Coretta Scott King’s legacy and strengthen support for the center’s work.

The Coretta Scott King Legacy Fundraising Banquet will be held Sunday, April 26, at the Springfield Museum of Art, with doors opening at 5 p.m. and the program beginning at 5:30 p.m.

The program will be hosted by Dr. Queen Meccasia Zabriskie, director of the Coretta Scott King Center, and honorary co-host John Gudgel, president of The 365 Project board of directors.

Speaking with the News last week, Zabriskie said the CSKC has traditionally held celebrations in honor of King’s April 27th birthday, and this year’s banquet is designed to both continue that tradition and reflect the center’s current priorities and create space for community engagement.

“We’re not focusing on a particular aspect of her legacy, except for giving the college permission to create a center named after her that focuses on social justice education and diversity education,” she said. “So it’s celebrating that history, but also talking about the contemporary work and the future work of the center.”

The evening’s program will include dinner, a 20th anniversary presentation and a panel discussion titled “Forging a Way Forward: Facing Contemporary Human Rights and Civil Rights Challenges.” Panelists include Chad Dion Lassiter, executive director of the Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission; Denise Williams, president of the Springfield NAACP; Valerie Lemmie, senior advisor for state and local government at the Kettering Foundation; and Viles Dorsainvil, executive director of the Haitian Support Center.

Zabriskie said the panel is intended to center current issues affecting the region — particularly in Springfield, which has been at the center of both regional and national attention after the attempted removal of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians in that community by the Trump administration.

“When we talk about Springfield, we have to think about the current administration and the attacks on Springfield and on the Haitian community, in particular — that’s one of the issues that’s at the forefront of everyone’s minds,” she said. “It’ll give us a chance to talk about contemporary issues, but really, to talk with people who are engaged in the work of addressing and facing these contemporary human rights and civil rights challenges in this moment.”

The choice of the Springfield Museum of Art for the banquet, Zabriskie said, is both an acknowledgement of the ongoing social justice work in the city and a reflection of the museum being “mission-aligned” with the Coretta Scott King Center. And hosting the event in Springfield also offers a direct connection to King’s history, she added.

“Coretta Scott King’s first public solo [vocal musical] performance was in Springfield at the Second Baptist Church,” Zabriskie said. “So it gives us an opportunity to highlight that aspect of her legacy.”

Banquet attendees will also have access to museum exhibitions during the event, including “Black Lives as Subject Matter III” and a display of Haitian metal artwork. The banquet will conclude with a jazz performance by Cuban American pianist and composer Fabian Almazan, whose work explores themes of musical innovation and environmental justice.

Zabriskie said the event is part of a broader effort to strengthen connections between the center and communities across the region. To that end, in the weeks leading up to the banquet, the center hosted a series of smaller conversations during Women’s History Month in Columbus, Dayton, Springfield and the village. Those gatherings, Zabriskie said, were intended to invite community input and begin building a wider network of support that could inform the center’s next phase of work.

“We really wanted to have a conversation with people in the audience about what kinds of things and what kind of work they would love to see come out of the center,” she said.

Participants, Zabriskie said, expressed interest in expanded voter education efforts, while also raising the possibility of a more formal “friends of the center” network to support programming and outreach. Others pointed to opportunities to build on existing education initiatives; in particular, she noted positive feedback to the Ruby Bridges Walk to School Day event, which launched locally in 2024 and is held in November in collaboration with YS Schools. The event honors Bridges who, at age 6, was the first Black student to desegregate the previously all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1960.

Zabriskie said the upcoming banquet and fundraiser is also expected to include discussion of the development of a Coretta Scott King Humanitarian Award, which she said would recognize those who are “engaged in work that forwards the legacy and vision that Coretta Scott King worked so hard to create.”

Ultimately, Zabriskie said, the banquet is about building new connections and reinforcing existing ones in a time when antiracism and social justice work are being challenged at the highest levels of governance.

“The only way to navigate this is to support each other, to build this network of support,” she said.

And the best network, she said, is a “net that works,” an idea she credited to the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond.

“Already I can see in the conversations we’ve been able to have, and the possibilities for the work moving forward, the power of that kind of connection,” she said, nodding to the words of Coretta Scott King herself: “Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation.”

“The people who came before worked so hard to get us to this point, and we’re still working,” Zabriskie said. “So all is not lost.”

More information on the Coretta Scott King Center Legacy Fundraising Banquet is available at http://www.antiochcollege.edu