What is Martin Luther King Jr Day and why is it celebrated?

Al Jazeera takes a look at this federal holiday and what it means in the United States.

• Martin Luther King Jr Day is a federal holiday in the United States that takes place on the third Monday in January. It honours the life and legacy of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
• Each year, the celebration takes place on the Monday closest to his birthday, which is on January 15. This year, it is being held on January 16.
• Sunday would have been King’s 94th birthday. He was assassinated in 1968 at the age of 39 in Memphis, Tennessee.
• In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law, and it was first observed on January 20, 1986. The first time all states observed it was in 2000.

• Reagan said the holiday was meant to remember King and “the just cause he stood for”. “America is a more democratic nation, a more just nation, a more peaceful nation because Martin Luther King Jr became her pre-eminent non-violent commander,” Reagan said in 1983.
• According to the White House, only three people in the US have a holiday observed in their honour: Christopher Columbus, George Washington, and King.
• Banks and stock markets are closed on Monday, and generally, public schools observe the federal holiday too.

What was King’s legacy?

• King led a campaign of non-violent protests and civil disobedience in the struggle to end discrimination, including racial segregation, in the US in the 1950s and 1960s.
• He pushed for social and economic improvements for African Americans while also fighting for legal equality.
• “King was a critical force in bringing the anti-Black, racist struggles facing Black Americans to the communities, living rooms and dinner tables of white Americans who had long had the privilege of overlooking and denying its existence,” journalist Jenn M Jackson wrote for Al Jazeera in 2021. “He did this while sacrificing his own safety and the safety of his family.”
• Speaking about his legacy, Taylor Branch, his biographer, told Al Jazeera in 2018: “We were on the mission to redeem America from the triple scourge of racial bigotry, of war and poverty for a largely invisible minority, [and] to have that ambition is just stunning.”