01/19/2026
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, is a US holiday observed on the third Monday in January honoring the achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister who advocated the use of a nonviolent means to an end racial segregation; he first came to national prominence during a bus boycott by African Americans in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. He founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 and led the 1963 March on Washington. The most influential of African American civil rights leaders during the 1960s, he was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations, facilities, and employment, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964.
He was tragically assassinated on April 4, 1968, but we continue to remember his actions and fight for African American civil rights today and every day.
