A large crowd was on hand Monday morning at the C.L. Hoover Opera House for the 29th annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration.

Approximately 300 people filed into the opera house to hear a performance by the Wiley College Choir along with this years keynote speaker, Dr. Jose Soto.

Soto is a 1967 Junction City High School Graduate and the current Vice President for Access, Equity and Diversity at Southeast Community College, Lincoln, NE. In his speech Soto stuck with the theme of this years celebration “Reclaim the Dream…Move Forward” by quoting Dr. King.

“One of the greatest liabilities of life is that all to many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses that the new situations demand,” Soto quoted. “They end up sleeping through a revolution.”

Following the celebration approximately 250 people participated in the commemorative march to symbolize the civil rights marches of the 1960’s.