Martin Luther King Jr. Day (MLK Day) is a holiday celebrating the life and achievements of Martin Luther King Jr. It is one of only three federal holidays in the United States tied toa specific person, along with George Washington’s birthday, which is celebrated as Presidents’ Day in February, and Christopher ColumbusDay, in October. The holiday takes place annually around King’s birthday, January 15. It is set for the third Monday of January, usually sometime between January 15 and 21, because of the US government’s Uniform Monday Holiday Act.
King was a key figure in the American Civil Rights Movement. Born in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, King became a Baptistministerin Montgomery, Alabama, in 1954. A year later,he rose to political prominence when he led a Montgomery bus boycott following the arrest of African American Rosa Parks, who refused to give upher seat toa white passenger in the front of a bus. In 1963, he led the March on Washington, where he delivered his enormously influential “I Have a Dream” speech. In it, he said he dreamed of an America in which Blacks could truly be free, and racism would cease toexist. His words and non-violent actionsdirectly contributed tothe passing of the Civil Rights Act, which outlaweddiscrimination, and the Voting Rights Act, which gave African Americans full voting rights.
