Anita Hill headlines Boston Conservatory Orchestra's Black History Month show

Anita Hill will step onto the stage at Symphony Hall Friday night, reciting the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as part of the Boston Conservatory Orchestra's Black History Month program.

At Symphony Hall, Hill will treat guests to the civil rights leader's words as part of Joseph Schwantner's 1982 piece "New Morning For The World." Hill said the orchestra asked her to narrate the evening, and she felt "urged" to do so, recognizing it as a "singular moment" in her life.

"They're words that belong to the movement and belong to our history," Hill told Radio Boston ahead of the performance Friday. "I am a contemporary beneficiary of the movement, and we are now in 'movement' territory again to fight for justice, to fight for rights that are being eroded."

Hill has been a prominent figure for years, following her groundbreaking testimony in 1991 accusing Clarence Thomas, then a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, of sexual harassment.

A lawyer and educator at Brandeis University, she has for years worked as an activist focused on issues like gender-based violence.

The performance will also feature works by several late and lauded Black composers, including William Grant Still and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. It will also showcase works by highly admired Black composers shaking up the world of orchestra today, like Valerie Coleman, whose pieces highlight the evolving threads of civil rights and empowerment.

"I've always thought of the search for equality as generational," Hill said. "One generation has a responsibility to do some things, but they pass along, hopefully, the movement in a better position than what was handed to them. Then, that generation takes on and builds on what has been done in the past."

She said her work now is to think deeply about that shift, and "what my generation can give to [the next] that puts them on the right course for saving the world."