Atlanta’s King Holiday Observance kept the city’s tradition of a full week of purpose. This year, the King Center kicked off 2026 with packed programming that blended culture, community, and red carpet energy, all while pushing one urgent message to the front: nonviolence is not soft, it is strategic.
The 2026 King Holiday Observance ran January 12 through January 17 in Atlanta ahead of the federal Martin Luther King Jr Holiday with a theme of“Mission Possible II: Building Community, Uniting a Nation the Nonviolent Way.” With Dr. Bernice King front and center, it ultimately framed the week as a reminder that the King legacy is not only meant to be remembered, it is meant to be practiced.
The week kicked off Monday, January 12, with Andscape’s “Hoops, Hopes and Dreams” screening premiere and Black Carpet Experience.
Hosted by Dr. Bernice A. King and Dr. Jay, the opening night focused on aspirations, opportunities, and storytelling in sports and culture, setting the tone for a week that would move beyond ceremony and into real conversations about what community building looks like right now.
It also explored the little-known fact that Dr. King was an astute basketball player.
One of the most powerful stops on this year’s lineup came Thursday night at the College Football Hall of Fame, where Nothing to See Here: Watts (a community-led documentary about a county in California) brought an intense, unfiltered look at how relationship building and truth-telling can interrupt violence.
On the red carpet, Bernice A. King summed up the biggest misconception people still carry about the city.
“Utopia. Unachievable. Pie in the sky,” King told BOSSIP, adding that some people treat it like it is weak “because everybody is tough, you know, in this world, you got to be tough. You got to fight back and nothing can be further from the truth.”
Nothing to See Here: Watts brought Atlanta a documentary that does not try to “inspire” viewers with polished messaging. It forces you to sit with what violence looks like in real time, what it steals from a community, and what it takes to build anything stable after the damage has already been done.
The film is mostly shot in selfie mode, and that choice matters. Instead of feeling like an outside production dropping in for a storyline, it plays like a collaborative record. The community is telling its own story in its own voice, with the kind of closeness that makes you feel like you are in the room, not just watching from a distance.
To put it in perspective, this was not a quick turnaround project. The documentary took three years to create, and that time shows how layered the storytelling feels and how many voices were brought into the room.
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