What: The Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Medicine will celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and legacy of justice, equality and peaceful activism.

The event will also note the April 2015 death of Levi Watkins Jr., a pioneering cardiac surgeon and civil rights leader. Watkins also created the annual Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration at Johns Hopkins.

Internationally acclaimed opera singer Denyce Graves, one of the event’s keynote speakers, will perform. The second keynote speaker will be Levi Garraway, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and nephew of Watkins.

Johns Hopkins leaders will share remarks on the commemoration’s theme, “The Beloved Community: A Force for Social Change.” Ronald J. Daniels, president of The Johns Hopkins University; Paul B. Rothman, M.D., dean of the medical faculty and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine; and Ronald R. Peterson, president of The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System and executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine, will speak. Eight recipients of the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Awards will be honored for their work helping those in need.

Speakers at previous commemorations include Coretta Scott King, Desmond Tutu, Rosa Parks, Stevie Wonder, Maya Angelou, Dick Gregory, John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, James Earl Jones and Freeman Hrabowski III.

When: Friday, Jan. 8, 2016, at noon

Where: Turner Auditorium, East Monument Street, between North Broadway and Rutland Avenue

Parking is available in nearby garages and on East Monument Street.