In the history of the United States of America, there are few figures as influential and well-known as the late Martin Luther King, Jr. No other single person is as responsible as King for the success of the civil rights movement, the period of reformation that aimed to abolish racial discrimination against African Americans and allowing suffrage in Southern states. King was a Baptist minister who became involved in the civil rights movements early in his career. photo credit: rocknroll_guitar

Although many reformation movements throughout history have involved violence and forced change, King championed the idea of nonviolent protest, propelling the civil rights movement to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness. King is widely known for organizing the March on Washington in 1963 and delivering the groundbreaking “I Have a Dream” speech, considered to be the greatest speech in American history and one that has cemented Martin Luther King, Jr. as one of the greatest orators in American history. For all of these reasons and more, the United States observes Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on the third Monday of each January in order to roughly coincide with King’s birthday, January 15. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a time to honor King’s contributions to the civil rights movement and for bringing equality to African Americans.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929, the son of Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. Attending Booker T. Washington High School, King skipped the ninth and the twelfth grade and began studying at Morehouse College at the age of fifteen without actually formally graduation from college. In 1948, King graduated from Morehouse College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. King would graduate from Crozer in 1951 with a Bachelor of Divinity degree and would then go on to procure a Doctor of Philosophy from Boston College for his studies in systematic theology. In 1953, King married Coretta Scott on the lawn of her parents’ house in Alabama and the two would go on to have four children: Yolanda King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice King.

Although Martin Luther King, Jr. certainly was an extraordinary man in his own right, historians have attributed many influences to King that would have shaped his thinking and allowed him to contribute to the civil rights movement in the way that he did. One of these influences is Howard Thurman, an educator and civil rights leader that was also a classmate of King’s father. Thurman is said to have enlightened King in the ideas of Gandhian protest, the nonviolent method of achieving change for which Gandhi was known during that time period. In part due to Thurman’s guidance, King eventually went to visit Gandhi in India in 1959 in order to seek counsel from the man who was able to do so much without the use of violence. Because of the trip, King resolved to go about his desired state of equality without succumbing to the use of violence, but instead using peace in order to bring about change. King directly attributed his awakening, of sorts, to Gandhi.

One of King’s first large-scale protests was the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. When fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin, a schoolgirl, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in compliance with the Jim Crow laws of the South, she was arrested. King was on the committee from the Birmingham African-American community that looked into the case, but other members of the community decided to wait for a better case to pursue before taking action. Then, about nine months later on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus. Edgar Nixon, a committee member, urged and planned a boycott of the Montgomery Bus System, one that was lead by King to great success. For 385, a full-scale bus boycott took place, and the situation was so tense that King’s house was bombed. Eventually, King himself was arrested for his part in the campaign, but the situation eventually ended with a United States District Court ruling that ended racial segregation on Montgomery buses.

The most iconic moment in King’s life and the one that stands out most to today’s generation is the 1963 March on Washington. Although he was not the main logistical organizer of the event, King has become intimately associated with the landmark protest. King, who was representing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial, one that has gone down as history as one of the greatest American speeches ever. The theme of the March on Washington was to show that racial harmony was possible, but there also was a list of demands that the protestors had in order to ensure a fairer and more equal society. These demands included an end to racial discrimination in public schools, a set of meaningful civil rights laws, including a law that would prohibit racial discrimination in employment, protection of civil rights workers from police brutality, $2 minimum wage for all workers, and self-government for Washington D.C. Although there was plenty of tension surrounding the March on Washington and many prominent civil rights proponents thought the march would not be successful, the March on Washington led to many changes that the African American community desired.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was founded as a holiday by labor unions making contract negotiations. After King’s 1968 assassination, a bill in Congress was created that would make King’s birthday, January 15, a national holiday. When the bill came to a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1979, it failed to pass by a margin of five votes. Part of the reason that so many representatives voted against the passage of the bill was that King never held a public office, making the proposed holiday an event in honor of a private citizen. This would have gone against a long-standing tradition in the creation of federal holidays. Also, opponents argued that a paid holiday for federal employees would be too expensive. Regardless, a tremendous surge of public support for the passage of the bill led President Ronald Reagan to sign a bill making Martin Luther King, Jr. Day a federal holiday. The first instance of the holiday was observed on January 20, 1986. Unfortunately, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was met with reluctance and resistance in several states, but in 2006, all 50 states observed the holiday for the first time since its creation.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is certainly one of the most influential and iconic figures in American history. Few other men have contributed so much to social equality in the United States, let alone the entire world, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a time to honor an extraordinary man for all of his contributions to the civil right movement. While Gandhi introduced nonviolent protest as a means to achieve social change to the world, Martin Luther King, Jr. is credited with bringing the concept of peaceful revolution to the United States and applying for the benefit of the entire country.