Mlk Day Timeline: How The Martin Luther King Jr Birthday Became A Holiday
ATLANTA – It’s been almost 54 years since the world tragically lost Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to violence. Each year in January, the United States remembers the civil rights leader with a day in Dr. King’s honor.
Though Dr. King lost his life in April 1968, it would be 15 years before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day would be declared a federal holiday, and another three years before it would be observed.
For Millennials and Gen Z, who grew up with educational films like “Our Friend, Martin” in school, it’s hard to imagine not having a day dedicated to the civil rights champion. But the story of how MLK Day went from concept to fruition, like its namesake, is a story of perseverance.
Starting in 1968, the year Dr. King was assassinated and less than five years after his famous I Have a Dream speech, Rep. John Conyers introduced legislation for a federal holiday to commemorate King. Rep. Conyers would introduce legislation in every legislative session from 1968 to 1983.
President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, with observance on the third Monday of January each year. Born in 1929, King’s actual birthday is January 15. The holiday was first observed in 1986.
Other states resisted observing the holiday as such, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. It was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000.
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Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memoriala monument to the president who a century earlier had brought down the institution of slavery in the United Stateshe shared his vision of a future in which this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’
The speech and march cemented Kings reputation at home and abroad later that year he was named Man of the Year by TIME magazine and in 1964 became, at the time, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the spring of 1965, Kings elevated profile drew international attention to the violence that erupted between white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where the SCLC and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had organized a voter registration campaign.
Captured on television, the brutal scene outraged many Americans and inspired supporters from across the country to gather in Alabama and take part in the Selma to Montgomery march led by King and supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent in federal troops to keep the peace.
That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to votefirst awarded by the 15th Amendmentto all African Americans.
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How Did Martin Luther King Jr Day Come To Be A Federal Holiday
On April 8, 1968, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., introduced legislation for a federal holiday, according to The King Center.
The next year, on Jan. 15, 1969, annual ceremonies commemorating King’s birthday were launched by The King Center in Atlanta. It called for nationwide ceremonies and began working to gain support for the holiday.
In the 1970s, support for a national Martin Luther King Jr. holiday grew. Several states, including Illinois, Massachusetts and Connecticut, become the first states to enact statewide King holidays, but Congress failed to act on a national level, according to The King Center.
“The campaign to get the holiday started almost immediately after he was killed, and people worked on it for a long time before it happened, said Honey, who wrote “Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign.”
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter called on Congress to vote on the King Holiday Bill. Not everyone was on board, and the bill was defeated by five votes in the House in November 1979.
Despite years of setbacks, Kings widow, Coretta Scott King, continued to fight for approval of the holiday and testified before Congress multiple times.
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Capture And Guilty Plea
The FBI investigation found fingerprints on various objects left in the bathroom from which the gunfire had come. Evidence included a rifle from which at least one shot had been fired. The fingerprints were traced to an escaped convict named . Two months after assassinating King, Ray was captured at ‘s while he was trying to depart the for , , or on a false in the name of Ramon George Sneyd. Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee and charged with King’s murder.
Ray confessed to the assassination on March 10, 1969. On the advice of his , Ray took a guilty plea to avoid a conviction and potential . Ray was sentenced to a 99-year prison term, but he recanted his confession three days later.
Ray fired Foreman and claimed that a man whom he had met in by the alias of “Raoul” was involved, as was Ray’s brother Johnny, but that Ray himself was not. He said through his new attorney that, although he did not “personally shoot King”, he may have been “partially responsible without knowing it”, hinting at a conspiracy. In May 1977, Kershaw presented evidence to the that he believed exonerated his client, but tests did not prove conclusive. Kershaw also claimed that Ray was somewhere else when the shots were fired, but he could not find a witness to corroborate the claim.
When Is Martin Luther King Jr Day
The third Monday in January is Martin Luther King Jr. Day . It has been a federal holiday since 1986. This means that it is an observed holiday for federal employees, as well as for many schools and businesses. This also means that the holiday does not always fall on Martin Luther King Jr.s true birth date, January 15.
This year, Martin Luther King Jr. Day will be observed on Monday, January 17, 2022.
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What Was Martin Luther Kings Family Life Like
Martin Luther King, Jr., grew up as the middle child of Michael King, Sr., and Alberta Williams King. His father was the minister of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlantathe same church where Martin Luther King, Jr., would eventually minister. In 1953 King married Coretta Scott, and the two had four children: Yolanda, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott, and Bernice.
When Was It Finally Established As A Federal Holiday
In the years that followed Kings assassination, many statesincluding Illinois, Massachusetts, and Connecticutpassed laws to celebrate Kings birthday as a state holiday. Congress first voted to create a national holiday in 1979, but the legislation failed by five votes in the House. Following a heated debate in the Senate, the bill was finally approved by Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983. Even then, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was met with strong resistance from some states it wasnt until 2000 that all 50 states recognized Kings birthday as a federal holiday.
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Year Battle: The Fight For Mlk Day
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, also known as MLK Day, is celebrated every year in the United States on the third Monday in January to honor the achievements of the civil rights leader who advocated for nonviolent resistance against racial segregation.
Its also the only federal holiday designated by Congress as a National Day of Service. Americans are encouraged to follow in Dr. Kings footsteps by participating in public service activities.
Its a day on, not a day off, said Dr. Martin L. Boston, Assistant Professor in Pan African Studies and Ethnic Studies at California State University, Sacramento. There is no better term to say who Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was than a servant. So, MLK Day is a time to think about the most marginalized, most under-resourced, most undervalued people, and think of ways that you can service those people.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is, usually, celebrated nationwide with marches, parades, special ceremonies, and community service events. But it was a long battle to get MLK Day recognized as a national federal holiday.
Even though MLK Day represents an American hero, service, and unity among all, it took 15 years for the federal government to approve the holiday and an additional 17 years for it to be recognized in all 50 states.
2022 King Holiday Observance Beloved Community Commemorative Service
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center
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Becoming A State Holiday Took Longer
Recognition of the holiday at the state level in all 50 states took several years. New Hampshire was the last state to officially recognize the holiday in the state as Martin Luther King, Jr Day in 1999, previously calling it Civil Rights Day. Alabama and Mississippi Martin Luther King, Jr Day is celebrated alongside Robert E. Lees Birthday, who was born 19 January.
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Poor People’s Campaign 1968
In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the “Poor People’s Campaign” to address issues of economic justice. King traveled the country to assemble “a multiracial army of the poor” that would march on Washington to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created an “economic bill of rights” for poor Americans.
The campaign was preceded by King’s final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? which laid out his view of how to address social issues and poverty. King quoted from Henry George and George’s book, Progress and Poverty, particularly in support of a guaranteed basic income. The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C., demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States.
King and the SCLC called on the government to invest in rebuilding America’s cities. He felt that Congress had shown “hostility to the poor” by spending “military funds with alacrity and generosity.” He contrasted this with the situation faced by poor Americans, claiming that Congress had merely provided “poverty funds with miserliness.” His vision was for change that was more revolutionary than mere reform: he cited systematic flaws of “racism, poverty, militarism and materialism”, and argued that “reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.”
Selma Voting Rights Movement And Bloody Sunday 1965
In December 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Selma, Alabama, where the SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months. A local judge issued an injunction that barred any gathering of three or more people affiliated with the SNCC, SCLC, DCVL, or any of 41 named civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights activity until King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965. During the 1965 march to Montgomery, Alabama, violence by state police and others against the peaceful marchers resulted in much publicity, which made racism in Alabama visible nationwide.
Acting on James Bevel‘s call for a march from Selma to Montgomery, Bevel and other SCLC members, in partial collaboration with SNCC, attempted to organize a march to the state’s capital. The first attempt to march on March 7, 1965, at which King was not present, was aborted because of mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day has become known as Bloody Sunday and was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the civil rights movement. It was the clearest demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King and Bevel’s nonviolence strategy.
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If Kings Birthday Is Jan 15 Why Is Mlk Day On The Third Monday In January
You can thank the Uniform Monday Holiday Act for that, according to the Department of Labor. The bill was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968, and originally designated that three federal holidays Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Washingtonâs birthday would fall on Monday, according to the bill. It also recognized Columbus Day as a federal holiday. Years later, Veterans Day was returned to its original date of Nov. 11.
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The act was meant to âenable families who live some distance apart to spend more time togetherâ and allow federal employees time to travel, Johnson said in a 1968 statement.
So, while Kingâs birthday is Wednesday, Jan. 15, this year, it is celebrated like some of the other floating holidays under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.
Contributing: Mary Bowerman, USA TODAY
Regulation Of Campus Attire
In October 2009, Morehouse College initiated a campus wide attire policy that prohibits students from wearing women’s clothes, , as classroom attire, or bandanas on their heads, or at official college-sponsored events. This dress code is part of the Five Wells which holds that “Morehouse Men are Renaissance Men with a social conscience and global perspective who are Well-Read, Well-Spoken, Well-Traveled, Well-Dressed and Well-Balanced.” William Bynum, vice president for Student Services was quoted by CNN as saying, “We are talking about five students who are living a gay lifestyle that is leading them to dress a way we do not expect in Morehouse men.” These remarks and the attire policy itself have been the source of great controversy both on and off the campus. Then-university president Robert Michael Franklin Jr. sent out an email to the schools’ alumni, clarifying that the university’s attire policy was not intended as an affront to gay students.
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Letter From Birmingham Jail
In 1960 King and his family moved to Atlanta, his native city, where he joined his father as co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. This new position did not stop King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players in many of the most significant civil rights battles of the 1960s.
Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly severe test during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest segregation, unfair hiring practices and other injustices in one of Americas most racially divided cities.
Arrested for his involvement on April 12, King penned the civil rights manifesto known as the Letter from Birmingham Jail, an eloquent defense of civil disobedience addressed to a group of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.
St Augustine Florida 1964
In March 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with Robert Hayling’s then-controversial movement in St. Augustine, Florida. Hayling’s group had been affiliated with the NAACP but was forced out of the organization for advocating armed self-defense alongside nonviolent tactics. However, the pacifist SCLC accepted them. King and the SCLC worked to bring white Northern activists to St. Augustine, including a delegation of rabbis and the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, all of whom were arrested. During June, the movement marched nightly through the city, “often facing counter demonstrations by the Klan, and provoking violence that garnered national media attention.” Hundreds of the marchers were arrested and jailed. During this movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.
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Mlk Day Volunteer Opportunities 2022 Near You
In his memory, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is the only federal holiday designated as a national day of service in which Americans are encouraged to step up to make our communities more equitable.
The annual event is an opportunity for Americans to answer the call famously posed by King, “Lifes most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks before a crowd of 25,000 in front of the Montgomery, Alabama state capital building on March 25, 1965, in Montgomery, Alabama.
There are many local MLK Day service project opportunities that can be found by zip code on the AmeriCorps website, the federal agency which leads the MLK Day of Service and the nations volunteer efforts.
Chicago Open Housing Movement 1966
In 1966, after several successes in the south, King, Bevel, and others in the civil rights organizations took the movement to the North, with Chicago as their first destination. King and Ralph Abernathy, both from the middle class, moved into a building at 1550 S. Hamlin Avenue, in the slums of North Lawndale on Chicago’s West Side, as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor.
The SCLC formed a coalition with CCCO, Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, an organization founded by Albert Raby, and the combined organizations’ efforts were fostered under the aegis of the Chicago Freedom Movement.During that spring, several white couple/black couple tests of real estate offices uncovered racial steering: discriminatory processing of housing requests by couples who were exact matches in income, background, number of children, and other attributes. Several larger marches were planned and executed: in Bogan, Belmont Cragin, Jefferson Park, Evergreen Park , Gage Park, , and others.
When King and his allies returned to the South, they left Jesse Jackson, a seminary student who had previously joined the movement in the South, in charge of their organization. Jackson continued their struggle for civil rights by organizing the Operation Breadbasket movement that targeted chain stores that did not deal fairly with blacks.
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