Keynote speakers for Grand Valley's 2018 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Week were April Reign, creator of the viral hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, and Bree Newsome, who climbed a flagpole in South Carolina in 2015 to remove a Confederate flag.

With the theme, #WhereDoWeGoFromHere?, Christy S. Coleman highlighted an event on January 16 hosted by the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies. Coleman, CEO of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia, and former president of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, offered insight into contemporary questions about history, identity, and democracy.