Each January, Las Vegas turns Martin Luther King Jr. Day into King Week, says Shaundell Newsome, co-chair for the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Parade and its associated events. Now in its 44th year, Nevada’s longest-running King parade has grown into a citywide experience, taking full advantage of the three-day weekend “to get more families involved, more people, and other organizations involved,” he says.
The parade, whose 2026 theme is “Living the Dream—Honoring the Past, Embracing the Future,” is widely regarded as the largest MLK Day parade west of the Mississippi River, drawing tens of thousands of spectators and over 200 parade entries in recent years. It is also embedded in a full “King Week” of events that combine civil rights commemoration with a technology summit, youth leadership, and scholarship programs. The route runs through Downtown Las Vegas along Fourth Street, from Gass Ave. toward Ogden, right in the historic city core.
Newsome’s connection is personal and long-standing. “The first time that I actually attended the parade was in the early ’90s with my kids,” he says. “I was a single father with four kids, and I’ve been going every year since.” A few years ago, parade founder and former Assemblyman Wendell P. Williams asked him to assist with taking the parade to the next generation—impressed by “our generational family business where my daughter’s our CEO now.”
Newsome, who founded Sumnu Marketing, which provides strategic marketing, branding, and community outreach, says his first move was to establish a brand identity for an event that had run for decades “without any logo, branding, or anything—but powered by a lot of passion and energy from the committee.” They upgraded the King Week Las Vegas to be an information hub, building out social channels so visitors can dedicate their entire weekend to the celebrations.
In many places, Newsome says, winter weather means events stay smaller and indoors. Here, King Week scales up. “For this Saturday, we’re having the U.S. Black Chamber president and CEO Ron Busby as a speaker; we’ve had our very own Congressman Horsford, and Las Vegas Raiders president Sandra Douglass Morgan as one of our grand marshals. We have kind of a celebrity feel, if you will—and it’s Vegas, right?” Looking ahead, he and the team are already planning additions like a music festival—“similar to an Essence Festival”—to make King Week one of the city’s marquee weekends, right after CES.
One signature event visitors should not miss is “Taste the Dream,” held on the historic Westside School campus, the first school built in Las Vegas, alongside heritage radio station KCEP Power 88 and the CSN Westside Education and Training Center. Newsome describes it as a food truck festival, anchored by a “Dreamers” room that brings together “the namesakes for all the 24 schools named after African Americans” to greet the next generation. Plan your own Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, from the scholarship summit to the food festival and jazz night fundraiser, at kingweeklasvegas.com.