The annual Martin Luther King Jr. extended assembly will be Jan. 16 with the theme “Black is more than a word,” and a pioneering journalist as the featured speaker, according to Black Students’ Association president Lea Runesha.

BSA members organize the mandatory high school assembly.

“We are going to have auditions after we come back we come back from Thanksgiving break in the beginning of December,” Lea said. “There are some posters up around school if you want some more information.”

BSA says submissions should be centered around the theme.

“We really want to see the way you interpret it; hence the ‘more than a word’ part,” Lea said.

Dorothy Butler Gilliam will be the featured speaker at this year’s assembly. Ms. Gilliam was the first African-American female reporter at The Washington Post and a civil rights activist who reported on the integration of the “Little Rock Nine” into Little Rock Central High School.