When leaders at Project S.T.O.R.Y. noticed there were no events celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Concord, they decided that needed to change.

“We want the community to be able to show up and … celebrate Martin Luther King’s work,” said Fisto Ndayishimiye, a local organizer who volunteers with the group. “Especially [considering] the fact that Concord, we’re not really into that a lot… those kind of events, Concord doesn’t really take them seriously.”

Project S.T.O.R.Y., a volunteer-run after-school program in Concord, will host a celebration at the Capitol Center for the Arts on Monday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The event will include a keynote speaker who will reflect on King’s teachings of racial equality and justice, a discussion about honoring those teachings to affect positive change and readings from King’s speeches narrated by kids involved with the organization.

“The event is to commemorate Dr. King’s work in making our society better and making us realize that there’s this love in humanity and we must use that love to influence other people and to change the world, to change our society, to make it more welcoming for everybody,” Ndayishimiye said.

Ndayishimiye loves his volunteer work with Project S.T.O.R.Y., and he’s involved with several other local advocacy organizations like Change for Concord and One Concord. He said the city doesn’t celebrate diversity as much as he’d like to see.

“We have different cultures here, but we don’t celebrate that,” Ndayishimiye said. “We don’t recognize that, we don’t prioritize that, we do not include those people at the table.”

The city of Concord hosts an annual multicultural festival but has not advertised any events this year for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Charm Emika, the director at Project S.T.O.R.Y., said work remains to be done in Concord. King’s teachings, she believes, can serve as a guiding light.

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“Perhaps that’s part of the path — learning about people like Dr. King and learning about how he was able to make change, and educate people, and unify people, and get people to understand the way that we should be doing things and to bring hope,” Emika said.

New Hampshire’s history with Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a bumpy one: The Granite State was the last to formally recognize the holiday. Former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen made the holiday official in 1999, making this New Hampshire’s 25th year honoring King’s legacy.

“At the time, New Hampshire was the only state that didn’t recognize the holiday — a grave injustice that I knew we had to rectify,” Shaheen, now a U.S. senator, said in a statement. “Dr. King’s leadership, message of peace and faith in citizen engagement enabled our nation to make great strides toward addressing systemic racism, but there’s more work to be done to achieve his vision of full equality under the law.”

Advocates said they’ve seen slow but noticeable progress since Shaheen signed the holiday into law. Where there may have been only a few celebrations in bigger cities at first, this year there are around 20 happening statewide.

Ndayishimiye also noted the state’s growing diversity, especially in cities like Manchester and Nashua.

“I think it’s a power that is pushing everybody to understand that we have to create inclusion in our communities and we have to bridge the gaps,” he said. “I think that there’s been an improvement to those events. There have been improvements in our state.”

Beyond bigger cities, there are events throughout the state this week in places like Bethlehem, Hudson, Laconia, Crawford Notch, Portsmouth, Peterborough, Jaffrey and Dartmouth.

Rev. James Wells, a pastor at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Goffstown, said a church member recently spoke with him about how far New Hampshire has come. The member remembered a time when the only Martin Luther King Jr. Day events were in Manchester, Nashua and the Seacoast.

Wells is on the steering committee for the Martin Luther King Coalition of New Hampshire, and he noted that, although New Hampshire was late to recognize the holiday, the annual governor’s proclamation refers to the day by a more expansive and encompassing name than in many other states. In New Hampshire, January 20 is known as Martin Luther King Civil Rights Day.

“It is not only about King as an individual person,” Wells said, “but the movement that he led and that he inspired and continues to inspire.”

The Coalition will host a celebration in Manchester on Monday from 12:50 p.m. to 4 p.m. Wells said he’s excited for more interpersonal conversations through breakout sessions at the event.

“People who come don’t just hear speeches and political proclamations. They will have the opportunity to go and connect with people who are trying to build that more equitable society,” Wells said.

While acknowledging the growth in his community, Ndayishimiye said there’s still much to do. He sees racism and discrimination in Concord, and he said his work is not to “point fingers” but to improve the community.

“Any Black man, Black woman who’s in this community, they’re citizens. They love this community. They want to live here, they want to call it home, they want to feel safe, they want to feel included in our resources,” he said. “I think that’s been improvement, but still, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done, improvement that needs to be made.”

“We must fight,” Ndayishimiye said.

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.