Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is actually the official Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.  It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around King’s birthday, January 15. The holiday is similar to holidays set under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.

About Martin Luther King Jr.

King was the chief spokesman for activism in the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968), which successfully protested racial discrimination in Federal and State law. The campaign for a Federal Holiday in King’s honor began soon after his assassination in 1968. President Ronald Reagan signed the Holiday into Law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later. At first, some 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.

“I Have a Dream”

..is a public speech that Mr. King Jr. delivered during the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” on August 28, 1963, in which he calls for an end to racism in the United States and called for civil and economic rights. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. the speech was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement.

Beginning with a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed millions of slaves in 1863, King observes that: “one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.” Toward the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for a partly improvised peroration on the theme “I have a dream,” prompted by Mahalia Jackson’s cry: “Tell them about the dream, Martin!” In this part of the speech, which most excited the listeners and has now become its most famous part, King described his dreams of freedom and equality arising from a land of slavery and hatred. The March on Washington put pressure on the Kennedy administration to advance the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in Congress.

His Legacy

In the wake of the speech and march, King was named Man of the Year by TIME magazine for 1963, and in 1964. He was also the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The full speech did not appear in writing until August 1983, some 15 years after King’s death, when a transcript was published in The Washington Post. 

His legacy is remembered with positive and inspiring notions of love, peace, and freedom for the progress of humanity.

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