OKC Metro Celebrates MLK Day

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma celebrated Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with a full schedule of activities, honoring the late Dr. King as well as local community leaders.
At the 2026 Midwest City Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Prayer Breakfast, Langston University President Dr. Ruth Ray Jackson served as the keynote speaker, and Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt was honored with the Clara Shepard Luper Community Service Award.
Jackson commended the committee for holding the prayer breakfast for the last 29 years. She noted the theme for this year’s Prayer Breakfast was “Where Do We Go From Here?”
In answer to that question, she encouraged local business leaders to support scholarship programs, and for local churches to host events that help students with their college applications and financial aid paperwork and provide mentorship and encouragement.
“We have to reconnect to moral leadership,” Jackson continued. “Leadership is not about titles. As Dr. King taught us, it’s about service. It is choosing to do what is right when it’s hard. It’s about modeling love, and integrity, and justice in a world that needs all three.”
According to the Prayer Breakfast Committee, the Clara Shepard Luper Community Service Award is “presented to a local resident who has exemplified service to the community, dedication to social justice, and to the ideals demonstrated by the late Oklahoma City Civil Rights Leader Mrs. Clara Shepard Luper.”
“Mayor Holt has led with an inclusive ‘One OKC’ philosophy that has fully welcomed the city’s diverse communities into OKC’s renaissance,” according to the committee. “He has worked to ensure that investments from initiatives like MAPS 4 equitably impact parts of the city like Northeast OKC. And he has elevated the city’s civil rights story like never before, led by his inclusion of the Clara Luper Civil Rights Center in MAPS 4.”
“The historic Clara Luper Civil Rights Movement in Oklahoma City was largely unknown outside of the African American community and outside of OKC. It was something that we were not teaching our kids… and we’ve changed that over the last 10 years,” Holt said. “It’s a powerful and impactful story. It changed Oklahoma City. It changed the world… It’s not just about honoring history, it’s about inspiring us today.”
Holt expressed his support for State Question 836, which would create open primaries in the state. Holt said that the mayor’s race is nonpartisan, so he “had to face all of the voters” and thus had to address the issues that affect all of the voters – and that approach would likely yield more responsive candidates on a statewide level. Holt noted that the ads for several candidates focus, not on Oklahoma’s decline to 50th in education, but on transgender children and Muslims.
“Do you think those are the two things that are the greatest challenges we face in Oklahoma right now?” Holt said, a question to which the crowd loudly answered, “No!”
Though Gov. Kevin Stitt was expected to participate in the Bell Ringing Salute to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. held at the Oklahoma History Museum, Stitt was a no-show.
Marilyn Luper Hildreth, daughter of Oklahoma City Civil Rights icon Clara Luper, was undeterred by the governor’s absence, grabbing hold of the bell ringer alongside two children, leading the crowd in a loud, repeated chant of “Let freedom ring!”