Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!
January 20, 2025
An event every year that begins at 12:00 am on day third of January, repeating indefinitely
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!
Did you know? It took over 15 years for Martin Luther King Jr. Day to come into being. In the year after King’s death, Congressman John Conyers Jr. introduced legislation to create the federal holiday. Three years later, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference also presented Congress with a petition for a holiday, but the bill stalled for years without sufficient support.
By the early 1980s, efforts by figures such as Coretta Scott King and Stevie Wonder pushed the bill through the House and, eventually, the Senate. In 1983, President Reagan signed the bill into law, finally making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a federal holiday on the third Monday of January.
Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mathew Ahmann in a crowd), Rowland Scherman, 1963
