Programs & Events

The MCC Diversity Matters Book Series began in 2008 and consists of up to five books featured for discussion from September to June each year. Audience members are encouraged to read the book and join to share in a discussion with an appointed leader. It is not required to read the book to attend the discussion. Limited copies of the books are available in the MCC library.

Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'connell's Urgent mission to bring healing to homeless people by Tracy Kidder

Date: Monday, January 20, 2025
Time: 2:00 p.m.- 3:00 p.m.
Location: South Omaha Campus, Mahoney, Room 511

After Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General, the hospital’s chief of medicine made a decision. Would he defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? That year turned into O’Connell’s life’s calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O’Connell and his colleagues as they work with thousands of homeless patients, some of whom we meet in this illuminating book. We travel with O’Connell as he navigates the city streets at night, offering medical care, socks, soup, empathy, humor, and friendship to some of the city’s most endangered citizens. He emphasizes a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls “a system of friends.”

Much as he did with Paul Farmer in Mountains Beyond Mountains , Kidder explores how Jim O’Connell and a dedicated group of people have improved countless lives by facing and addressing one of American society’s most difficult problems, instead of looking away.

Soil....The Story of a Black Mother's Garden by Camille T. Dungy.

Date: Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Time: 6:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m. 
Location: Fort Omaha, Campus, Building 10, Room 110

In resistance to the homogeneous policies that limited the possibility and wonder that grows from the earth, Dungy employs the various plants, herbs, vegetables, and flowers she grows in her garden as metaphor and treatise for how homogeneity threatens the future of the planet, and why cultivating diverse and intersectional language in our national discourse about the environment is the best means of protecting it.

Definitive and singular, Soil functions at the nexus of nature writing, environmental justice, and prose to encourage readers to recognize the relationship between the peoples of the African diaspora and the land on which they live, and to understand that wherever soil rests beneath their feet is home.

The last secrets of Anne Frank: The Untold Story of Her Silent Protector By: Joop Van Wijk-Voskuijl and Jeroen De Bruyn

Date: Wednesday, March 12, 202
Time: 10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m.
Location: Elkhorn Valley Campus, Room 114

Told by her own son, The Last Secrets of Anne Frank intertwines the story of Bep and her sister Nelly with Anne’s iconic narrative. Nelly’s name may have been scrubbed from Anne’s published diary, but Joop van Wijk-Voskuijl and Jeroen De Bruyn expose details about her collaboration with the Nazis, a deeply held family secret. After the war, Bep tried to bury her memories just as the Secret Annex was becoming world famous as a symbol of resistance to the Nazi horrors. She never got over losing Anne nor could Bep put to rest the horrifying suspicion that those in the Annex had been betrayed by her own flesh and blood.

“Part biography, part whodunit” (The Wall Street Journal), this is a story about those caught in between the Jewish victims and Nazi persecutors, and the moral ambiguities and hard choices faced by ordinary families like the Voskuijls, in which collaborators and resistors often lived under the same roof.

Beautifully written and unsettlingly suspenseful, The Last Secrets of Anne Frank will show the Secret Annex as we’ve never seen it before. And it provides a powerful understanding of how historical trauma is inherited from one generation to the next and how sometimes keeping a secret hurts far more than revealing a shameful truth.

The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony by Annabelle Tometich

Date: Tuesday, May , 2025
Time: 12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m.
Location: South Omaha Campus, Mahoney, Room 511

The Mango Tree is a poignant and deceptively entertaining memoir of growing up as a mixed-race Filipina “nobody” in suburban Florida as Annabelle traces the roots of her upbringing—all the while reckoning with her erratic father’s untimely death in a Fort Myers motel, her fiery mother’s bitter yearning for the country she left behind, and her own journey in the pursuit of belonging.

With clear-eyed compassion and piercing honesty, The Mango Tree is a family saga that navigates the tangled branches of Annabelle’s life, from her childhood days in an overflowing house flooded by balikbayan boxes, vegetation, and juicy mangoes, to her winding path from medical school hopeful to restaurant critic. It is a love letter to her fellow Filipino Americans, her lost younger self, and the beloved fruit tree at the heart of her family. But above all, it is an ode to Annabelle’s hot-blooded, whip-smart mother Josefina, a woman who made a life and a home of her own, and without whom Annabelle would not have herself.

The Diversity Matters Film & Lecture Series began in 2006. Approximately nine presentations annually are offered across MCC campuses and centers. Discussion leaders are identified for the films.

Film/Discussion:  "Unadopted"

Led by: Kimberly Barnes, CASA

Of the 440,000 kids in foster care in the U.S., more than a quarter is over age 12. Adoption rates for these older kids are abysmally low. What happens when you're “too old” to get adopted? After 20 years in foster care, Noel Anaya was never adopted. He was determined to investigate what went wrong, and finds the answers in his first documentary film. "Unadopted" starts with Anaya untangling his own unique story, which leads him to a wider examination that reveals the social welfare system’s silent but pervasive systemic bias against families of color, and teenagers aka “older youth". While most young adults look to their parents for answers about identity and upbringing, Anaya turns to court records, social workers, and most importantly, three California teens who reveal the critical decisions they’re currently making to secure a “forever family”—or not.

Date: Monday, January 6, 2025
Time: 6:00-7:30 p.m.
Where: Fort Omaha Campus, Building 10, Room 110

Film/Discussion: "Breaking the news"

Led by:

Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora wanted to do something radical about the white men dominating newsrooms. “70% of policy and politics editors are men, almost all of them are white,” says Emily. “These are the people deciding which stories are told, who is telling them, and whether they will be on the front page or the back page, if they get there at all.” So, Emily and Amanda along with Editor-at-Large Errin Haines and a scrappy group of fearless women and non-binary journalists band together to buck the status quo and launch The 19th*, a digital news start-up. Named after the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote, but with an asterisk to acknowledge the Black women and women of color who were omitted, the 19th’s work is guided everyday by the asterisk - asking who is being omitted from the story, and how can they be included. Errin Haines covers politics and race, including the first national story on the killing of Breonna Taylor. Emerging Latina reporter Chabeli Carrazana is based in Florida and reports on gender and the economy. LA-based Kate Sosin, a nonbinary reporter, covers LGBTQ+ stories, including the large number of anti-trans bills becoming law in states around the country. The film documents the honest discussions at The 19th* around race and gender equity and inclusion, revealing that change doesn’t come easy, and showcasing how one newsroom confronts these challenges both as a workplace and in their journalism. But this film is about more than a newsroom. It’s about America in flux, and the voices that are often left out of the American story.

Date: Thursday, March 13, 2025
Time: 10:00-11:30 a.m.
Where: South Omaha Campus, Mahoney 511

Film/Discussion: "Free Chol Soo Lee"

Led by:

In 1970s San Francisco, 20-year-old Korean immigrant Chol Soo Lee is racially profiled and convicted of a Chinatown gang murder. After spending years fighting to survive, investigative journalist K.W. Lee takes a special interest in his case, igniting an unprecedented social justice movement. Highlighting the radical power of community activism, this vital solidarity call also reveals the lifelong scars that incarceration leaves behind.

Date: Monday, June 5, 2025
Time: 10:00-11:30 a.m.
Where: Elkhorn Valley Campus, Room 114

Participation for all programs is free and open to the public.

Starting in 1986, the year the federal Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday was established, then director of Marketing and Public Relations, Dr. Barbara J Coffey, spearheaded the event at MCC. Initially held in Bldg. 7 at the Fort Omaha Campus, the luncheon first moved to the ITC Conference Center at South Omaha Campus to accommodate a larger audience and eventually reestablished its home at the Fort Omaha Campus in January 2011 after completion of Bldg. 22 Swanson Conference Center.

Similar to the holiday, the event celebrates the life and achievements of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an influential American civil rights leader most well-known for his campaigns to end racial segregation on public transport and for racial equality in the United States.

This is a major campus activity involving a renowned keynote speaker, awards to campus/community individuals or groups, cultural stage entertainment and sit-down meal served to audience members at linen-covered tables. Typical time frame is 1.5 hours, 12 noon -1:30 p.m. to accommodate attendance by 12 noon – 1:50 p.m. classes.

40^th Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration

Date: Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Time: 12 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Location: Fort Omaha Campus, Building 22 Swanson Conference Center, Room 201
Keynote Speaker: Rev. Dr. Johnathan C. Augustine, Senior pastor of St. Joseph AME Church, faculty member at Hampton University School of Religion, and author of When Prophets Preach: Leadership and the Politics of the Pulpit (Fortress Press, 2023).
Books are available for purchase at the luncheon.
Luncheon provided by: MCC Institute for Culinary Arts
Register and pay ($20) at: *Martin Luther King Luncheon - 25JAHIST200A

About the speaker:

Dr. Jonathan C. Augustine (a/k/a Jay Augustine) serves as senior pastor of St. Joseph AME Church and as a member of the inaugural faculty at the Hampton University School of Religion. He is an accomplished author, sought-after speaker, and internationally recognized academic leader.

Prior to leading St. Joseph, Augustine served at Historic St. James AME Church, in downtown New Orleans, the oldest predominantly Black, Protestant congregation in the Deep South, while also teaching at Southern University Law Center. He has taught at North Carolina Central University Law School and Duke University Divinity School, where he also served on the Board of Visitors, and was chaplain to the Duke Football Team. He also served eight years as the general chaplain of his beloved Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.

An accomplished author, his most recent books are When Prophets Preach: Leadership and the Politics of the Pulpit (Fortress Press, 2023) and Called to Reconciliation: How the Church Can Model Justice, Diversity and Inclusion (Baker Academic, 2022). His scholarly articles appear in publications including, the University of Richmond Law Review, Howard Law Journal, Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal, Louisiana Law Review, Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, and Theology Today, among others.

Augustine serves as chairman of the board of the Agora Strategy Council of the Payne Center, a research-based “think tank” and affiliate of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. He also serves as a member of the board of directors of PartnersGlobal, Inc., a non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, DC. He has been invited to lecture, internationally, in Heidelberg, Germany and Accra, Ghana; and has been nationally featured on C-SPAN Book-TV. His leadership was also nationally profiled, in March 2024, on the front page of USA Today.

A gifted and nationally celebrated communicator, Augustine was inducted into the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Board of Preachers (2024) and elevated to serve as vice president of the Judicial Council (Supreme Court) of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He was twice awarded the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Volunteer Service (2024 & 2017), and previously named “Outstanding Alumni Brother of the Year,” by Alpha Phi Alpha (2017). He also won the fraternity’s Belford V. Lawson National Oratorical Scholarship (1994). As an emerging leader, Augustine received the Ten Outstanding Young Americans Award, from the U.S. Jaycees (2004) and was named to Ebony Magazine’s “30 Leaders of the Future” (2001). He is an active member of Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity (Alpha Tau Boulé).

After graduating from Howard University, with a degree in economics, Augustine served as a decorated infantry officer in the United States Army. He subsequently earned his law degree at Tulane University and served as a law clerk to Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice (then-Associate) Bernette Joshua Johnson, before practicing law and serving in both publicly elected and gubernatorially appointed offices. He earned his Master of Divinity degree at United Theological Seminary and completed a fellowship at Princeton Theological Seminary. He later earned his Doctor of Ministry degree at Duke University and is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Education degree at The University of Alabama.

An annual celebration of achievements by African Americans and a time for recognizing the central role of Blacks in U.S. history. The event grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian Carter G. Woodson and other prominent African Americans. Since 1976, every U.S. president has officially designated the month of February as Black History Month. Other countries around the world, including Canada and the United Kingdom, also devote a month to celebrating black history.

2025 Black History Month

Please check back for more information about 2025 events.

The Vietnamese New Year, known around the world as Tet Nguyen Dan (Tet), is probably the only festival that best concludes Vietnam’s rich, colorful culture and long history. It marks the beginning of Spring as well as of a New Year in the Lunar Calendar. To the Vietnamese, it is the biggest and most sacred festival. Begin the grandest and most significant holiday in the country, it would equal the most important celebrations of other parts of the globe like the Fourth of July, New Year, Ester and Thanksgiving all combined.

Tet is a three-day celebration, but the festivities could stretch up to over a week. Drinking, splurging on traditional Vietnamese food, travelling and relaxing commonly takes place. Spending time with family and friends, gift giving and paying respect to ancestors by bringing them offerings is important. Visiting shrines and local pagodas is always a part of the activities. The celebration takes place sometime between the end of January through early February, depending on the Lunar calendar.

The Vietnamese Friendship Association of Omaha initiated the MCC annual celebration. The 25th anniversary was held in 2018. The Vietnamese Friendship Association of Omaha members join MCC staff to create a Vietnamese New Year Committee. The Committee considers the actual date of the New Year, other community New Year celebrations and requests a Saturday evening to hold this celebration in the ITC Conference Center at the South Omaha Campus.

Presented by Metropolitan Community College in collaboration with Vietnamese Friendship Association of Omaha

Sunday, February 2, 2025
7-10:30 p.m. CST
South Omaha Campus, CAM Building, Conference Center Room 120.
2909 Edward Babe Gomez ave. Omaha, NE 68107
Free admission
Business attire reccomended to honour our Vietnamese hosts.

Celebrate the Lunar New Year with Vietnamese music,  food and cultural entertainment

Tet Nguyen Dan is a way of saying Lunar New Year in Vietnam, and it literally means, “the first morning of the first day of the New Year”. It is one of the most important festivals for the Vietnamese people and is a national holiday as well. The locals in Vietnam usually spend this day having a good time with family and friends. Tet arrives with the first day of spring in Vietnam and is the busiest time in the country.

Tet holidays are based on the lunisolar calendar of the Chinese. So, the dates change every year for the Lunar New Year / Tet. However, it usually falls in the months of late-January or early-February.

Tet Nguyen Dan is celebrated for three consecutive days, unlike the Chinese New Year which is observed for fifteen days. During Tet, the locals observe a few traditions for a whole week. They usually celebrate the first day with family. The second day is spent on visiting friends. And the last and final day of Tet is celebrated by them by visiting temples, paying respect to their ancestors by offering ‘Ngu Qua’ (five kinds of fruits) at their family altar, and paying respect to their teachers.

Tet is basically that time of the year when the locals are up for a fresh start, forgiving and forgetting the past! They settle their debts, forgive old grumbles and clean their houses from all the clutter. This is the time when they make way for all the good luck and fortune to arrive in their lives and hope for a better upcoming year. As it’s a national holiday, all local shops and businesses will be closed. People get busy weeks in advance to buy gifts, groceries and clothes and take care of all other preparations.

As recently as the 1970s, women’s history was virtually an unknown topic in the K-12 curriculum or in general public consciousness. To address this situation, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a “Women’s History Week” celebration for 1978.

The week of March 8th, International Women’s Day, was chosen as the focal point of the observance.

Due to the start of the Spring quarter and efforts to draw audience participation from faculty and students, MCC celebrates Women's History Month programming during the last two weeks of March. Women’s History Month had its origins as a national celebration in 1981 when Congress passed Pub. L. 97-28 which authorized and requested the President to proclaim the week beginning March 7, 1982 as “Women’s History Week.” Throughout the next five years, Congress continued to pass joint resolutions designating a week in March as “Women’s History Week.” In 1987 after being petitioned by the National Women’s History Project, Congress passed Pub. L. 100-9 which designated the month of March 1987 as “Women’s History Month.” A special Presidential Proclamation is issued every year which honors the extraordinary achievements of American women.

Metropolitan Community College's annual International Fair features diverse stage entertainment, cultural displays and opportunities to learn from distinguished artists. The spacious sunlit South Omaha Campus Connector Commons is an ideal location to highlight the cultural and artistic diversity that continues to weave the fabric of South Omaha. A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services naturalization ceremony welcomes new U.S. citizens at the beginning of the International Fair annually. This event is family friendly and free and open to the public.

Cinco de Mayo, or the fifth of May, is a holiday that celebrates the date of the Mexican army’s 1862 victory over France at the Battle of Puebla during the Franco-Mexican War. The day is also known as Battle of Puebla Day. While it is a relatively minor holiday in Mexico, in the United States, Cinco de Mayo has evolved into a commemoration of Mexican culture and heritage, particularly in areas with large Mexican-American populations.

At MCC, this activity involves a meal created and served to the audience by a Mexican restaurant or caterer at the South Omaha ITC Conference Center. Traditional Mexican entertainment, a renowned keynote speaker and recognition of 2-3 awardees who positively impact the Hispanic/Latino community are part of the celebration.

In 1978, a joint congressional resolution established Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week. The first 10 days of May were chosen to coincide with two important milestones in Asian/Pacific American history: the arrival in the United States of the first Japanese immigrants (May 7, 1843) and contributions of Chinese workers to the building of the transcontinental railroad, completed May 10, 1869.

In 1992, Congress expanded the observance to a month-long celebration that is now known as Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Per a 1997 U.S. Office of Management and Budget directive, the Asian or Pacific Islander racial category was separated into two categories: one being Asian and the other Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month is currently celebrated each year in the month of June to honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan. The Stonewall Uprising was a tipping point for the Gay Liberation Movement in the United States. In the United States the last Sunday in June was initially celebrated as “Gay Pride Day,” but the actual day was flexible. In major cities across the nation the “day” soon grew to encompass a month-long series of events. Today, celebrations include pride parades, picnics, parties, workshops, symposia and concerts, and LGBTQ Pride Month events attract millions of participants around the world. Memorials are held during this month for those members of the community who have been lost to hate crimes or HIV/AIDS. The purpose of the commemorative month is to recognize the impact that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals have had on history locally, nationally, and internationally.

The Student Alliance for Everyone (SAFE)

SAFE is the MCC student organization for LGBTQ+ and Allies. The primary mission of SAFE is to provide a sense of community and a safe space by fostering a social network where all identities are respected and by organizing events to facilitate connections and friendships among queer students and with others. SAFE is free to join, and you can participate to the extent your schedule permits. Being a member can even remain anonymous, if you prefer.

Juneteenth (short for “June Nineteenth”) marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. The troops’ arrival came a full two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth honors the end to slavery in the United States and is considered the longest-running African American holiday.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court House two months earlier in Virginia, but slavery had remained relatively unaffected in Texas—until U.S. General Gordon Granger stood on Texas soil and read General Orders No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

The Fort Omaha Intertribal Powwow highlights Native American dance, music, regalia, oral history and arts. With its rich ties to Native American history, where Ponca Chief Standing Bear and his people were detained pending the 1879 landmark civil rights case granting Native Americans the right of Habeas corpus, the Fort Omaha Campus continues to offer an ideal location for this outdoor community event uniting people of diverse cultures, races, socioeconomic backgrounds and ages. This event is family-friendly and free and open to the public.

Celebrating Native American cultures, the powwow honors the traditional dance, music, artistry, oral history and foods of various tribes across Nebraska and the surrounding region including Omaha, Ponca, Santee Sioux and Winnebago.

33rd Annual Fort Omaha Intertribal Powwow Head Staff

Emcee: Taylor Cheii Begay, Diné
Arena Director: Samuel J. Grant, Umónhon
Head Man Dancer: Cory Four Killer, Omaha/Lakota
Head Lady Dancer: April Godfrey, Isanti Dakota
Host Northern Drum: Maza Kute, Santee, NE
Host Southern Drum: Young Bucks, Sioux City, IA
Reigning Princess: Selena Whipple, Ponca Tribe of Nebraska
Head Princess Judge: Summer Barea, Omaha Nation

Vendor registration information at mccneb.edu/powwow/vendors

Free and open to the public
Questions? Contact interculturaled@mccneb.edu, (531) 622-2253 or 1 (800) 228-9553 ext. 2-2253

33rd Annual Fort Omaha Intertribal Powwow Sponsors

Watch previous Intertribal Powwow videos:

• 32nd Annual (2023)
• 31st Annual (2022)
• 30th Annual (2021)
• 29th Annual (2020)
• Powwow Committee

The Fort Omaha Intertribal Powwow committee is a gathering of MCC students, personnel and community members who work year-round to develop, implement and evaluate the powwow and all related aspects of the celebration. Membership is open throughout the year.

During National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 to October 15) we recognize the contributions made and the important presence of Hispanic and Latino Americans to the United States and celebrate their heritage and culture.

Hispanics have had a profound and positive influence on our country through their strong commitment to family, faith, hard work, and service. They have enhanced and shaped our national character with centuries-old traditions that reflect the multi-ethnic and multicultural customs of their community.

Hispanic Heritage Month, whose roots go back to 1968, begins each year on September 15, the anniversary of independence of five Latin American countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Mexico, Chile and Belize also celebrate their independence days during this period and Columbus Day (Día de la Raza) is October 12.

The term Hispanic or Latino, refers to Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.

International Education Week is typically held the third week of November, is an opportunity to celebrate the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide. This joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education is part of efforts to promote programs that prepare Americans for a global environment and attract future leaders from abroad to study, learn, and exchange experiences. Individuals and institutions interested in international education and exchange activities are encouraged to participate in International Education Week by holding related events in their local communities.

Since 2014, MCC has commemorated International Education Week with an evening event called Global Voices & Perspectives featuring a keynote message, cultural entertainment, an international photo contest and food. Since the end of Fall Quarter falls in November, this event is held in October in anticipation of International Education Week.

What started at the turn of the century as an effort to gain a day of recognition for the significant contributions the first Americans made to the establishment and growth of the U.S., has resulted in a whole month being designated for that purpose.

One of the very proponents of an American Indian Day was Dr. Arthur C. Parker, a Seneca Indian, who was the director of the Museum of Arts and Science in Rochester, N.Y. He persuaded the Boy Scouts of America to set aside a day for the “First Americans” and for three years they adopted such a day. In 1915, the annual Congress of the American Indian Association meeting in Lawrence, Kans., formally approved a plan concerning American Indian Day. It directed its president, Rev. Sherman Coolidge, an Arapahoe, to call upon the country to observe such a day. Coolidge issued a proclamation on Sept. 28, 1915, which declared the second Saturday of each May as an American Indian Day and contained the first formal appeal for recognition of Indians as citizens.

The year before this proclamation was issued, Red Fox James, a Blackfoot Indian, rode horseback from state to state seeking approval for a day to honor Indians. On December 14, 1915, he presented the endorsements of 24 state governments at the White House. There is no record, however, of such a national day being proclaimed.

The first American Indian Day in a state was declared on the second Saturday in May 1916 by the governor of New York. Several states celebrate the fourth Friday in September. In Illinois, for example, legislators enacted such a day in 1919. Presently, several states have designated Columbus Day as Native American Day, but it continues to be a day we observe without any recognition as a national legal holiday.

In 1990 President George H. W. Bush approved a joint resolution designating November 1990 “National American Indian Heritage Month.” Similar proclamations, under variants on the name (including “Native American Heritage Month” and “National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month”) have been issued each year since 1994.