Celebrations honoring Martin Luther King Jr were held all around Rochester Monday.
Nazareth College invited Mayor Lovely Warren to speak at their annual event. She shared why the holiday is important to her.
"Making sure that we understand what Dr. King lived for, his dream and not allow his legacy to be in vain. We all understand that he was tragically taken but we have an obligation to make sure that his dream continues to live on."
This year Nazareth introduced their first year of MLK visual and performing arts awards, celebrating student work centered on a social justice theme.
Rachel Rochelle Wiche won the visual arts category, illustrating the poem "Ballad of Birmingham" by Dudley Randall.
"I really loved it, I thought it was inspiring. The way that it was written, I heard it a couple of years ago and I never forgot about it."
The poem is about the 16th Street church in Birmingham Alabama that was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan. King delivered the eulogies for the four victims at their funeral in 1963.