What is the Scottsdale MLK Celebration?
Every January a Scottsdale audience gathers at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts to hear someone who was part of the civil-rights movement, or who studies it, talk about what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked of the country. The Martin Luther King Jr. Community Celebration is run by Community Celebrating Diversity (CCD), a Scottsdale nonprofit founded in 1993, and in 2026 it reached its 32nd annual edition.
The evening’s format has been stable for years: a reception, a program built around a nationally known keynote, the presentation of CCD’s Diversity Champion awards to local residents, and a reception afterward. In 2026 it was Thursday, January 15: reception at 5:30 p.m., program at 6, post-reception at 7:30. The speaker was Dr. Mary Frances Berry, historian, former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and a founder of the Free South Africa Movement. The theme was “Shaping our Future with Courage and Compassion.” Passes were $75.
The history explains why it exists. In the early 1990s Arizona was the state that had refused a King holiday, and Scottsdale residents who wanted to mark the day drove to Phoenix. CCD’s founding members Sandra Rembrandt and Don Logan decided the city should host its own. CCD says Scottsdale became the first city outside Phoenix to hold an annual MLK celebration, and that every major Arizona city has one now. We have not independently checked the “first” claim.
Going, and what you get
Tickets and timing. CCD sells individual passes and sponsorships on its website in the weeks before the event. The 2026 dinner fell on a Thursday, four days ahead of the Monday holiday, so check the date rather than assuming it falls on MLK Day. As of this writing (fall 2026), CCD had not posted the 2027 date or speaker. Martin Luther King Jr./Civil Rights Day 2027 falls on Monday, January 18, and Scottsdale city offices close that day.
The speakers. The keynote is the draw, and CCD’s list is long. It starts in 2001 with Ossie Davis. It continues with Rubin “The Hurricane” Carter (2002); Herman Boone and Bill Yoast, coaches of the unbeaten 1971 T.C. Williams High football team (2003); Judge Glenda Hatchett (2004); Martin Luther King III (2005); Julian Bond (2006); Juan Williams (2007); Lou Gossett Jr. (2008); former Essence editor Susan Taylor (2009); and Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson (2010). Later years brought Patricia Russell-McCloud, John Quiñones, Steve Pemberton, Ken Carter, former Buffalo Bills coach Marv Levy, Zak Ebrahim, Bill Norwood (the first Black pilot hired by United Airlines), Ken Nwadike Jr., Carmen Perez-Jordan, Herm Edwards, Dr. Benjamin Chavis, Cronkite School dean Battinto Batts (2024), Bakari Sellers (2025) and Mary Frances Berry (2026). CCD’s list doesn’t cover the years before 2001.
The champions. Each year CCD honors one or more Diversity Champions: people who live, work or volunteer in Scottsdale and who, in CCD’s words, “exemplify the philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” The program began in 2001. The honor roll is a who’s-who of civic Scottsdale: former mayor Mary Manross (2013), co-founder Don Logan (2010), Chief Alan Rodbell (2021) and Frances Ann Burruel (2015) among them. The 2026 honoree was speaker and Axon marketing leader Sasha R. Simmons. Anyone can nominate.
The students. CCD co-sponsors Youth Voices with the Scottsdale Unified School District. It is a session held alongside the dinner where middle and high school students hear the keynote speaker and ask questions. CCD also awards college scholarships to local students. In 2026 the CCD board was led by Dr. Scott Menzel, who is also SUSD’s superintendent.
Timing. It is a dinner-and-program event, not a rally. The program begins at 6, so arrive for the 5:30 reception if you want to meet anyone.
Why Scottsdale needed its own
Arizona’s King holiday took six years and a lost Super Bowl. Governor Bruce Babbitt created a state holiday by executive order in 1986. His successor, Evan Mecham, rescinded it in 1987, and the fight that followed made national news. In November 1990 voters rejected both holiday measures on the ballot, Propositions 301 and 302. Proposition 302 drew about 49 percent. The NFL then pulled Super Bowl XXVII from Arizona and moved it to Pasadena. In 1992 voters approved the holiday by referendum. State law (A.R.S. §1-301) names it “Martin Luther King, Jr./Civil Rights Day.”
CCD was founded in 1993, the year after that referendum, as what it calls a public/private partnership to promote diversity in Scottsdale. By CCD’s own account, Rembrandt and Logan’s starting point was simple: Valley residents were already celebrating, but in Phoenix, and they thought Scottsdale “would take pride in hosting a celebration in its own community.”
How old is it, exactly?
CCD calls the 2026 event the 32nd annual. If every year counted and none was skipped, the first was in 1995. CCD’s published speaker list begins only in 2001, and its “About” page, written at an earlier date, says “some 25 years later.” We could not find a dated program from the 1990s, so 1995 is an inference from the count, not a confirmed date. The 2021 edition fell during the pandemic. CCD lists a speaker for that year (Ken Nwadike Jr.), but not whether the event was held in person.
How it has held up
Two things explain why the celebration has lasted. The first is who runs it. CCD is an independent 501(c)(3) and a member of the Scottsdale Chamber, funded by tickets and sponsors, and its partners have included Scottsdale Leadership, the Diversity Leadership Alliance, Scottsdale Community College, the Scottsdale Cultural Council, the school district and the city. When the city closed its own diversity office in 2025 and ended its Juneteenth celebration, the January celebration went ahead under CCD in 2026. The second is the speaker list. Few community dinners in a city of a quarter million have brought in Ossie Davis, Julian Bond and Martin Luther King III, and the speakers are the reason people come back.
Where the rest of the record lives
The missing years are recoverable. CCD (8711 E. Pinnacle Peak Rd. #261) should hold the programs from the first editions and the speakers before 2001. The Scottsdale Progress January issues from 1987 to 1995, on microfilm at the Civic Center Library, would show how Scottsdale’s council and residents lined up during the Mecham years and the 1990 vote, a chapter this city’s history pages have not yet told. For that era, see the 1980s and the 1990s.