SAVE THE DATE: Sunday, January 18, 2026 | 3 pm
FREE Community Concert
Join us for Project STEP’s Annual Concert and Commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Sunday, January 18th at 3 pm. Venue coming soon!
Listen to music from the talented musicians of Project STEP, hear from honored speaker, historian, author, and member of the Project STEP Board of Directors, Dr. Alexandria Russell, and join us in commemorating the life and legacy of Dr. King.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Honored Speaker: Dr. Alexandria Russell
Dr. Russell is the Executive Director of the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail and a non-resident W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute Fellow at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. She recently served as the Interim Helaine B. Allen Vice President of Education & External Engagement at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She earned Bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Secondary Education from the College of Charleston in 2009 and her Ph.D. in History from the University of South Carolina in 2018.
Her book, Black Women Legacies: Public History Sites Seen and Unseen (University of Illinois Press), examines the evolution of African American women’s public commemorations across the United States from the late nineteenth century to the present.
Dr. Russell has received several fellowships to support her research, including a Rose Library Research Fellowship at Emory University. In 2023, she was a recipient of the South Carolina Preservation Service Award for her contributions to African American Women’s History Research and Documentation.
She is the Founder & Executive Director for Black Women Legacies, a nonprofit organization that digitally maps historical and contemporary memorials of Black women on a free, public website. As a historian and memorializer, she is committed to making her research accessible to ALL.
Master of Ceremonies: Dr. Abdi Mohamed Ali
Dr. Ali
serves as Executive Director of WordPowered, the founder of Rev. Michael E. Haynes Legacy, and is a member of the Project STEP Board of Directors as well as a former parent of two Project STEP graduates.
Trained in educational ethnography under the mentorship of Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Ali has taught students in grades 5-12 in five different Boston Public Schools as an English/Humanities teacher. A longtime Roxbury resident, Ali is a founding faculty member of the Boston Arts Academy where for 13 years he co-designed an interdisciplinary humanities and writing program. A graduate of the Boston University Creative Writing Program, Ali studied poetry with Poet Laureate of the United States, Robert Pinsky, and Nobel Prize for Literature recipient, Derek Walcott.
Prior to joining WordPowered, Ali led the largest expansion of district-based teacher preparation and licensure programs for paraeducators, career changers and bilingual candidates. This multigenerational teacher pipeline established teaching apprenticeships for high school and college students as well.
