Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, in the United States, holiday (third Monday in January) honoring the achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr. A Baptist minister who advocated the use of nonviolent means to end racial USA segregation, he first came to national prominence during a bus boycott by African Americans in Montgomery, USA Alabama, in 1955. He founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 and led the 1963 March on USA Washington. The most influential of African American civil rights leaders during the 1960s, he was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations, facilities, and employment, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in USA 1964. He was assassinated on April 4, USA 1968.

Almost immediately after King’s death, there were calls for a national holiday in his USA honor.

Beginning in 1970, a number of states and cities made his birthday, January 15, a USA 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 USA 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 USA political leaders.

American civil rights movement, mass protest movement against racial segregation and discrimination in the southern United States that came to national prominence during the mid-1950s. This movement had its roots in the centuries-long efforts of enslaved Africans and their descendants to resist racial oppression and abolish the institution of slavery. Although enslaved people were emancipated as a result of the American Civil War and were then granted basic civil rights through the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, struggles to secure federal protection of these rights continued during the next USA century.

Through nonviolent protest, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s broke the pattern of public facilities’ being segregated by “race” in the South and achieved the most important breakthrough in equal-rights USA legislation for African Americans since the Reconstruction period (1865–77). Although the passage in 1964 and 1965 of USA major civil rights legislation was victorious for the movement, by then militant Black activists had begun to see their struggle as a freedom or liberation movement not just seeking civil rights reforms but instead USA confronting the enduring economic, political, and cultural consequences of past racial oppression.

American history has been marked by USA persistent and determined efforts to expand the scope and inclusiveness of civil rights. Although equal rights for all were affirmed in the founding documents of the United States, many of the new country’s inhabitants were denied essential rights. Enslaved Africans and indentured servants did not have the inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that British colonists asserted to justify their Declaration of Independence. Nor were they included among the “

People of the United States” who established the Constitution in order to “promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Instead, the USA Constitution protected slavery by allowing the importation of enslaved persons until 1808 and providing for the return of enslaved people who had escaped to other states.

As the United States expanded its boundaries, Native American peoples resisted conquest and absorption. Individual states, which determined most of the rights of American citizens, generally limited voting rights to white property-owning males, and other rights—such as the right to own land or serve on juries—were often denied on the basis of racial or gender USA distinctions. A small proportion of Black Americans lived outside the slave system, but those so-called “free Blacks” endured racial discrimination and enforced segregation. Although some enslaved persons USA violently rebelled against their enslavement (see slave rebellions), African Americans and other subordinated groups mainly used nonviolent means—protests, legal challenges, pleas and petitions addressed to USA government officials, as well as sustained and massive civil rights movements—to achieve gradual improvements in their status.

Events Leading to King USA Holiday  

On November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed the King Holiday Bill into law, designating the third Monday in January a federal holiday in observance of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The legislation to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day was first introduced just four days after his assassination on April 4, 1968. Still, it would take 15 years of persistence by civil rights activists for the holiday to be approved by the federal government and an additional 17 years for it to be recognized in all 50 states. Today, it is the only federal holiday designated as a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer and improve their communities.

King Day rituals began in Atlanta, with commemorative services held on January 15 at Ebenezer Baptist Church, which both Coretta Scott King and Ralph Abernathy attended. These events served as a template for federal holiday ceremonies. The day began with Martin Luther King III placing a wreath at his father’s grave, followed by notable speakers. The congregation sang “We Shall Overcome,” people drove cars with headlights on, and a Black state senator introduced a King holiday bill for Georgia. Many of these activities became rituals on subsequent commemorations in Atlanta.

Frederick Douglass became the most famous of the formerly enslaved persons who joined the abolition movement. His autobiography—one of many slave narratives—and his stirring orations heightened public awareness of the horrors of slavery. Although Black leaders became increasingly militant in their attacks against slavery and other forms of racial oppression, their efforts to secure equal rights received a major setback in 1857, when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected African American citizenship claims. The Dred Scott decision stated that the country’s founders had viewed Blacks as so inferior that they had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” This ruling—by declaring unconstitutional the Missouri Compromise (1820), through which Congress had limited the expansion of slavery into western territories—ironically strengthened the antislavery movement, because it angered many whites who did not hold enslaved people. The inability of the country’s political leaders to resolve that dispute fueled the successful presidential campaign of Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the antislavery Republican Party. Lincoln’s victory in turn prompted the Southern slave states to secede and form the Confederate States of America in 1860–61.

Key Points

• The establishment of Martin Luther King Jr. Day was the result of a 15-year campaign advocating for a national holiday to honor the civil rights leader.

• The movement gained momentum after the assassination of Dr. King in 1968, with various activists and organizations pushing for recognition of his contributions to civil rights.

• In 1979, a bill to create the holiday was introduced in Congress, but it faced significant opposition and was ultimately stalled. Public support for the holiday grew throughout the 1980s, fueled by grassroots efforts and campaigns led by civil rights groups.

• In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed the USA bill into law, designating the third Monday in January as Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

• The first official observance of the holiday took place on USA January 20, 1986. The USA holiday has since become a day of USA service, encouraging Americans to engage in USA community service and reflect on Dr. King's legacy.

From Black power to the assassination of Martin Luther King

The Selma-to-Montgomery march—led by King, John Lewis, and Hosea Williams—in March 1965 would be the last sustained Southern protest campaign that was able to secure widespread support among whites outside the region. The passage of voting rights legislation, the upsurge in Northern urban racial violence, and white resentment of Black militancy lessened the effectiveness and popularity of nonviolent protests as a means of advancing African American interests. In addition, the growing militancy of Black activists inspired by the then recently assassinated Black nationalist Malcolm X spawned an increasing determination among African Americans to achieve political power and cultural autonomy by building Black-controlled institutions.

When he accepted the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, King connected the Black American struggle to the anticolonial struggles that had overcome European domination elsewhere in the world. In 1966 King launched a new campaign in Chicago against Northern slum conditions and segregation, but he soon faced a major challenge from “Black power” proponents, such as SNCC chairman Stokely Carmichael. This ideological conflict came to a head in June 1966 during a voting rights march through Mississippi following the wounding of James Meredith, who had desegregated the University of Mississippi in 1962. Carmichael’s use of the “Black power” slogan encapsulated the emerging notion of a freedom struggle seeking political, economic, and cultural objectives beyond narrowly defined civil rights reforms. By the late 1960s not only the NAACP and SCLC but even SNCC and CORE faced challenges from new militant organizations, such as the Black Panther Party, whose leaders argued that civil rights reforms were insufficient because they did not fully address the problems of poor and powerless Blacks. They also dismissed nonviolent principles, often quoting Malcolm X’s imperative: “by any means necessary.” Questioning American citizenship and identity as goals for African Americans, Black power proponents called instead for a global struggle for Black national “self-determination” rather than merely for civil rights.

Although King criticized calls for Black separatism and armed self-defense, he supported anticolonial movements and agreed that African Americans should seek compensatory government actions to redress historical injustices and end poverty. He criticized U.S. military intervention in the USA Vietnam War, which he characterized as a civil war, insisting that war was immoral and that the American government had wrongly opposed nationalist movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In December 1967 he announced a USA Poor People’s Campaign that intended to bring thousands of protesters to Washington, D.C., to lobby for an end to poverty.

After King’s assassination in April 1968, the Poor People’s Campaign floundered, and the Black Panther Party and other Black militant groups encountered intense government repression from local police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO). In 1968 the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (also known as the Kerner Commission) concluded that the country, despite civil rights reforms, was moving “toward two societies one Black, one white—separate and unequal.” By the time of the commission’s report, claims that Black gains had resulted in “reverse discrimination” against whites were effectively used against significant new civil rights initiatives during the 1970s and ’80s.

As was the case for formerly colonized people in countries that achieved independence during the period after World War II, the acquisition of citizenship rights by African Americans brought fewer gains for those who were poor than for those who possessed educational and class advantages. American civil rights legislation of the 1960s became the basis for affirmative action—programs that increased opportunities for many Black students and workers as well as for women, disabled people, and other victims of discrimination. Increased participation in the American electoral system lessened Black reliance on extralegal tactics. Some former civil rights activists, such as John Lewis, Andrew Young, and Jesse Jackson, launched careers in electoral politics. Black elected officials, including mayors, began to exert greater influence than either Black power proponents or advocates of nonviolent civil rights protests. In 1969, believing that by speaking with a single voice they would have greater influence, 13 African American members of the U.S. House of

Representatives formed the Congressional Black Caucus “to promote the public welfare through legislation designed to meet the needs of millions of neglected citizens.” By the early 21st century that caucus numbered more than 40 members and could count among its achievements legislative initiatives involving minority business development, expansion of educational opportunities, and opposition to South Africa’s former apartheid system.

Indeed, during Obama’s presidency the issue of police brutality against Black Americans was increasingly in the headlines, and a seemingly unending series of high-profile incidents that resulted in the deaths of unarmed African Americans at the hands of police or while in police custody, including those of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner

in Staten Island, New York, in 2014, as well as that of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015, prompted widespread protest. The USA fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, in Sanford, Florida, in February 2012, by George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer, and Zimmerman’s subsequent acquittal on charges of second-degree murder sparked the founding online in 2013 of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement by three Black community organizers—USA Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi. A decentralized grassroots movement led by activists in local chapters, BLM attempted to emphasize the many ways in which Black people continued to be treated unfairly in society and the ways in which laws, policies, and institutions had perpetrated that unfairness.

The movement’s name signaled USA condemnation of the unjust killings by police of Black people (who were far more likely to be killed by police in the United States than white people) and the demand that society value the humanity and lives of USA Black people as much as it values those of white people. In 2020 the death of George Floyd as a result of a Minneapolis policeman kneeling on his neck for some nine minutes (graphically videotaped by a witness) brought a massive explosion of outrage and protest in cities and towns throughout the United States as BLM gained active support from millions of Americans.

At the turn of the 21st century, more than half the country’s more than 36,000,000 African Americans lived in the South; 10 Southern states had Black populations exceeding 1,000,000. African Americans were also concentrated in the largest cities, with more than 2,000,000 living in New York City and more than 1,000,000 in Chicago. Detroit, Philadelphia, and Houston each had a Black population between 500,000 and 1,000,000.

Names and labels
As Americans of African descent reached each new plateau in their struggle for equality, they reevaluated their identity. The slaveholder labels of black and negro (Spanish for “black”) were offensive, so they chose the euphemism colored when they were freed. Capitalized, Negro became acceptable during the migration to the North for factory jobs. Afro-American was adopted by civil rights activists to underline pride in their ancestral homeland, but Black—the symbol of power and revolution—proved more popular. All these terms are still reflected in the names of dozens of organizations. To reestablish “cultural integrity” in the late 1980s, Jesse Jackson proposed African American, which—unlike some “baseless” color label—proclaims kinship with a historical land base. In the 21st century the terms Black and African American both were widely used.

The early history of Black people in the Americas
Africans assisted the Spanish and the Portuguese during their early exploration of the Americas. In the 16th century some Black explorers settled in the Mississippi valley and in the areas that became South Carolina and New Mexico. The most celebrated Black explorer of the Americas was Estéban, who traveled through the Southwest in the 1530s.

The uninterrupted history of Black people in the United States began in 1619, when 20 Africans were landed in the English colony of Virginia. These individuals were not enslaved people but indentured servants—persons bound to an employer for a limited number of years—as were many of the settlers of European descent (whites). By the 1660s large numbers of Africans were being brought to the English colonies. In 1790 Black people numbered almost 760,000 and made up nearly one-fifth of the population of the United States.

Attempts to hold Black servants beyond the normal term of indenture culminated in the legal establishment of Black chattel slavery in Virginia in 1661 and in all the English colonies by 1750. Black people were easily distinguished by their skin color (the result of evolutionary pressures favoring the presence in the skin of a dark pigment called melanin in populations in equatorial climates) from the rest of the populace, making them highly visible targets for enslavement. Moreover, the development of the belief that they were an “inferior” race with a “heathen” culture made it easier for whites to rationalize the enslavement of Black people. Enslaved Africans were put to work clearing and cultivating the farmlands of the New World.

In 1979, on the 50th anniversary of King’s birth, the bill finally came to a vote in the House. However, even with a petition of 300,000 signatures in support, the backing of President Jimmy Carter, and testimonials from Mrs. King, the bill still was rejected by five votes in the House. Republican Missouri Congressman Gene Taylor led the opposition, which cited the costs of an additional federal holiday, and traditions that exclude private citizens from receiving recognition with public holidays named in their honor.

‘A day on, not a day off’  

On USA August 23, 1994, the King Holiday and Service Act was signed into law by USA President Bill Clinton. Inspired by King’s life of service, Congressman John Lewis and former Senator Harris Wofford proposed the legislation to encourage Americans to find common causes and methods of improving their communities. In honor of Congressman Lewis’ initiative to make the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday “a day on, not a day off,” the National Museum of African American History and Culture has organized donation drives and partnered with supporters to provide music, film screenings, and interactive activities to the public. If you are interested in giving back to your community this year, we encourage you to explore our website for volunteer opportunities or participate in the transcription of the Freedmen’s Bureau papers.

Statewide Observances Vary  

Despite the holiday’s federal recognition, statewide observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day is far from uniform. Some states include additional holidays, which are celebrated concurrently with Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Arizona and New Hampshire, for example, celebrate “Civil Rights Day” and Wyoming celebrates “Wyoming Equality Day.” Other states, like Alabama and Mississippi, have combined the King holiday with “Robert E. Lee Day” to honor the birthday of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who was born on January 19. However, Martin Luther King Day has been recognized in all 50 states since early 2000

Posted on 2026/01/20 09:02 AM