On this day, October 19th 1983, The King Holiday Bill passed the senate with a majority of 78 to 22. Merely few weeks later, on November 2nd, President Reagan singed a bill in the White House Rose Garden designating a federal holiday honouring Martin Luther King, Jr., to be observed on the third Monday of January.
Although his importance and overlooked by many, famously by the Arizonan Governor Evan Mecham who, in the late 1980s, cancelled MLK day saying: ‘I guess King did a lot for the coloured people, but I don’t think he deserves a national holiday’, King’s fundamental role in the American Civil Rights Movement and significance in world history cannot be ignored. Although simply the son of a Baptist minister, MLK received a doctorate degree in theology, played a crucial role in the organisation of first major protest of the civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and, in 1963, he led his monumental March on Washington, in which he delivered his renowned “I Have a Dream” address. This address alone singularly combats and disproves the opinions of all those believing Evan Mecham’s judgement to be correct.
On August 28 1963, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. preached the words ‘I have a dream.’ Unknown to him, these very words would become known by the whole world. When MLK Jr. addressed what he called “the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation,” he would inadvertently set off a worldwide movement for racial emancipation. This is clearly illustrated in the endless roads and civic facilities around the world to which the name Martin Luther King has been appended – celebrating the American civil rights leader’s universal cry for a more generous and humane world.
Grace - Upon - Paper 