On Nov. 2, 1983, former President Ronald Reagan signed the King Holiday Bill into law designating the third Monday of January a federal holiday. The holiday serves in remembrance of the civil rights leader Dr. Marin Luther King Jr. 

First introduced just four days after his assassination, this legislation took over 15 years of persistence from civil rights activists to be recognized federally, and an additional 17 years for it to be recognized in all 50 states. Martin Luther King (MLK) Jr. Day is the only federal holiday that is designated as a national day of service, encouraging Americans everywhere to engage in community service in honor of MLK.   

Born in Atlanta, Georgia on Jan. 15, 1929, Dr. King led The Civil Rights Movement across the United States (U.S.) from the mid-1950s until his assassination on April 4, 1968. His leadership was fundamental to ending legal segregation and achieving civil liberties for African Americans in the U.S.

Dr. King came from a Southern middle class family. Growing up on Auburn Avenue, also known as “Black Wall Street,” this bustling street was home to some of the most successful Black businesses and churches predating The Civil Rights Movement. From an early age, King was exposed to prejudices that were familiar to Black families living in the South.  

At age 12, MLK lost his maternal grandmother to a fatal heart attack. Upset by the news of his grandmother’s passing, Dr. King attempted suicide by jumping through a second-story window. Before beginning college at Morehouse College in 1944, Dr. King spent the summer on a tobacco farm in Connecticut. 

During his first extended stay in an integrated society, Dr. King observed race relations outside the segregated South, noting in a letter to his parents how shocking it was to see “Negroes and whites go [to] the same church … I never [thought] that a person of my race could eat anywhere.”

Courtesy of PBS

After his graduation from Morehouse in 1948, Dr. King spent the next three years at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. Here he studied Mahatma Gandhi’s “philosophy of nonviolence” and “the thought of contemporary Protestant theologians.” 

In 1951, Dr. King earned a bachelor of divinity degree, and was elected president of Crozer’s almost entirely white student body. In a recommendation letter for Dr. King, one of his professors at Crozer noted, “The fact that with our student body largely Southern in constitution a colored man should be elected to and be popular [in] such a position is in itself no mean recommendation.”

Seeking a foundation for his theological and ethical inclinations, after his graduation from Crozer in 1951, King went to Boston University (BU). Studying man’s relationship with God, King received his doctorate in 1955 for a dissertation entitled, “A comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.” 

During his studies at BU, MLK began working as the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. After he had worked there for over a year, a small group of civil rights activists began protesting racial segregation on the city’s public bus systems. 

Among these revolutionaries was Rosa Parks, an African American woman, who on Dec. 1, 1955 refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger —- a violation of the city’s segregation laws — thus beginning the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Dr. King — a young, well educated and respected man — was bolstered to the front lines of this 13-month protest. In his first speech to the Montgomery Improvement Association — the group organizing the boycott — King shared, “We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.

While leading this over one-year boycott, Dr. King faced extreme prejudice from surrounding communities — his home was blown up with dynamite and the lives of his family were threatened — but he still remained resilient in the face of adversity. 

By the spring of 1963, MLK’s campaign to end racial segregation practices in Birmingham, Alabama had amassed national attention when police hosed down and sent dogs onto protesters. During this demonstration, Dr. King — alongside hundreds of his supporters, including children — was arrested. From his cell in Birmingham Jail, Dr. King wrote his renowned “Letters from the Birmingham Jail,” detailing his philosophy of nonviolent resistance.  

In an effort to bring together multiple factions of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. King joined civil rights leaders to organize the historic March on Washington. Standing in front of a crowd of over 200,000 peaceful protesters at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 18, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Courtesy of the Gaurdian

His infamous “I Have a Dream” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial resulted in a strong shift of national opinion. By 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed, prohibiting “discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” By the end of 1964, King was regarded as one of the most respected civil rights activists, earning him the Noble Peace Prize.

At age 39, activism had taken a toll on Dr. King, he explained “I’m frankly tired of marching. I’m tired of going to jail.” On March 10, 1969, while standing on the second-story balcony of the Lorraine Motel, Dr. King was killed by a sniper bullet by white man, James Earl Ray. His death caused massive rallies and uprisings across over 100 cities in the U.S.

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