Martin Luther King Day

Justice and Peace Issues

MLK DAY Launches a Year of Service for America’s 250th ANNIVERSARY. This Year’s THEME is: “MISSION POSSIBLE: BUILDING COMMUNITY, UNITING A NATION THE NONVIOLENT WAYWith its focus on service, Martin Luther King Jr. Day kicks off the start of what organizers aim to make the largest year ever for volunteer service to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the nation. The King Center in Atlanta and local groups nationwide are encouraging volunteer actionseerism on MLK Day — from cleanups to donation drives — to honor the slain civil rights leader’s legacy. This year’s observances stress service as a civic duty, aligning with the U.S. semiquincentennial celebration goal to make 2026 a record year for volunteer service to create a “more perfect union.”King is the only non-president with a national holiday, a National Mall memorial in Washington, D.C., and a federal holiday designated as a day of service. In a 1957 speech in Montgomery, Alabama, after the successful Bus Boycott sparked by Rosa Parks’ arrest,

King famously challenged his audience, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” “The only ones among you who will really be happy are those of will have sought and found how to serve,” he said.Today, Bernice A. King, MLK’s daughter, directs the King Center, founded by the late Coretta Scott King to continue her husband’s work. In a news release Bernice King wrote that this year’s theme and events “reflect a call up and in, to the collective, critical work of building community, uniting a nation, and thereby shifting the world — the nonviolent way.” She stressed the urgency of realizing “our interconnectedness in what my father called the ‘World House,’ and to learn to live together well,” and said 2026 is meant to prepare people for this “love-centered strategic work.”SOME WAYS TO SERVEMLK Day events are scheduled in big and small cities nationwide. Even if there aren’t any organized projects planned nearby, there are several other ways people can serve their communities. Some examples:1. Volunteer at a local homeless shelters or soup kitchens.2. Go through your pantry, closets, basement, and garage, and bag up non-perishables and gently used items to donate.3. Visit an assisted living facility or local nursing home. Spend time with the residents through conversation and joining them in activities.4. Send thank-you notes to service and essential workers, including police and emergency responders, health care providers, teachers, snowplow drivers, mail carriers, grocery clerks, or anyone else who performs duties that increase community well-being.WHO WAS KING?King was a central leader in the mid-1950s Civil Rights Movement, advocating for desegregation through nonviolent protest. The 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, is universally recognized as a watershed moment and pivotal turning point for the Civil Rights Movement and American history. A federal holiday honoring his Jan. 15, 1929, birthday was approved 32 years later. At 35, King became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient in 1964 for his nonviolent efforts against racial inequality. Despite his powerful message, King was frequently targeted by police, assaulted four times and jailed 29 times, notably in Birmingham, Alabama, where he wrote the seminal “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.” The FBI intensely tracked and wiretapped King, especially after the 1963 March on Washington. From 1957, as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, until his 1968 death, King traveled over 6 million miles, gave 2,500 speeches, published five books, and spread Gandhi-inspired nonviolent resistance. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Had he lived, he would now be 97.

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