The History Of Martin Luther King Day (VIDEO)


On April 8, 1968, just four days after Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed, thousands of people marched through Memphis, Tennessee. That week, Detroit Representative John Conyers proposed legislation that would make January 15th, King’s birthday, a national holiday.

Two months later, King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, founded the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. It was meant to aid in works that her husband would’ve supported, but it also had the mission of making his birthday a national holiday.

Conyers’ bill stalled in Congress, so Conyers and Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.) resubmitted the bill during every consecutive legislative session after that. Congress finally passed the bill in 1983; however, it was moved to the third Monday in January because his actual birthday was deemed too close to Christmas and New Year’s Day.

The holiday was not recognized in every state until 2000. Utah became the very last to state to recognize it when they renamed their existing holiday, Human Rights Day. Ironically, many people in the South celebrate Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s birthday on Martin Luther King Day. In 2009, the holiday fell just one day before the inauguration of America’s first Black president — President Barack Obama.

Last year, Donald Trump held one of his many rallies at Liberty University on Martin Luther King Day. He barely mentioned King in the speech, but he said the holiday was the reason he had over 10,000 people there:

“It’s an honor to be here, and especially on Martin Luther King Day. We broke the record — we had the record for about three or four years the last time, and the first thing I said to Jerry and Becki [Falwell] when I got here, ‘Did we break the record?’ They said, ‘Yes, you did, by quite a bit.’ So we’ll dedicate that to Martin Luther King, a great man. And that’s a little bit of an achievement, I will tell you.”

The Trump administration wants to turn back the clock on many civil liberties. We will have to fight to keep all of our rights.

Featured image via YouTube screenshot

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