Martin Luther King Day (MLK) is observed each year on the third Monday of January and today marks this holiday observance.

MLK Day proves to be the only federal holiday designated as a national day of service aiming at helping communities and promoting real social changes. The day has become a real occasion for Americans to go volunteering so as to empower their counterparts and help their communities. However, it is always important to recall that MLK Day is above all a holiday that honors the achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King’s life and legacy

Born on January, 15 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist minister and an important civil rights activist. He spent his early life in Atlanta where he attended many different colleges before graduating a doctorate’s degree in Boston University School of Theology. Later, he came back to serve besides his father as co-pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Dr King was one of the most-known influential leaders of the sixties civil rights movement. He dedicated all his life to advocating for nonviolent resistance against inequality and racial segregation. Indeed, he always showed a real commitment and devotion towards helping his Black American counterparts through nonviolent actions. His civil rights struggle started in 1955 when he helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott – a campaign intended to end segregation on public transport – and found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. By the 1960s, he was then found to lead a march on Washington. Eventually, his struggle paid off and the civil rights act was promulgated in 1964. In the meantime, he was awarded the Nobel Prize of Peace and in 1965 the voting rights act was enacted. Three years later, on April 4, 1968, he was assassinated in Tennessee.

Observance and celebration of MLK Day

Martin Luther King Day is a public Holiday that is recognized by all 50 states of America, where it is a day off for the overall population. MLK Day was signed by Ronald Reagan and then put into law in 1983; but it was three years later that it became an official holiday. It is both combined with Civil Rights Day, a state holiday mostly celebrated in Arizona and New Hampshire that honors civil rights activists; and Idaho Human Rights Day, observed as a public holiday in the State of Idaho but celebrated by the general population along with Martin Luther King Day. MLK Day is usually celebrated through marches, parades, and speeches but with the critical situation the world is currently facing, this may probably occur differently. People may choose to celebrate and honor it at home with family by spending cheerful moments while empowering one another, given that it has been considered as a community-centered holiday. Indeed, MLK Day is first and foremost a holiday that honors Dr King’s commitment to improving the lives of others; and then encourages people to keep the good work while taking into account the legacy he has left to all American citizens.

Sources: ShareAmerica / AmeriCorps