Highlights:
- Martin Luther King Jr. was a minister, activist, and Nobel Peace Prize winner who became one of the most prominent leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.
- He helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott, the 1963 March on Washington, and several other non-violent protests in Alabama.
- During the March on Washington in 1963, he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech atop the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of over 250,000 people.
- King was assassinated in April of 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
- He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a federal holiday was established in his honor.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Day
Martin Luther King, Jr., Day is a holiday in the United States honoring the achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister and civil rights leader who advocated for nonviolent resistance against racial segregation.
In the United States, Martin Luther King, Jr., Day is observed annually on the third Monday in January. The day commemorates the life and work of Dr. King, who was a Baptist minister and prominent leader in the American civil rights movement. People are encouraged to use the day to “reflect on the principles of racial equality and nonviolent social change espoused by Dr. King.” The holiday is typically observed with events such as marches and rallies and speeches by politicians and civil rights leaders.
King was born on January 15, 1929. He rose to the fore of the civil rights movement in 1955 with the Montgomery bus boycott that followed the arrest of Rosa Parks, an African American woman who had violated the city’s racial segregation ordinances when she refused to give her seat on a bus to a white passenger. An advocate of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of using nonviolent resistance to effect social change, King promoted the use of nonviolent means to bring an end to racial segregation in the United States. In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts. He was assassinated in 1968.
Almost immediately after King’s death, there were calls for a national holiday in his honor. Beginning in 1970, a number of states and cities made his birthday, January 15, a holiday. Although legislation for a federal holiday was introduced in Congress as early as 1968, there was sufficient opposition, on racial and political grounds, to block its passage. In 1983 legislation making the third Monday in January a federal holiday finally was passed, and the first observance nationwide was in 1986. The day is usually celebrated with marches and parades and with speeches by civil rights and political leaders.
(Source: britannica.com)
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