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A New National Holiday
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, transformed the civil rights leader into an icon of the struggle to fulfill the American promise of equality for all. This panel is from the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, a demonstration in Washington, D.C., which King helped to organize but did not live to see.
On April 8, 1968, four days after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Congressman John Conyers introduced a bill to establish a federal holiday in his honor. For advocates of the legislation it was an effort to place Dr. King and the civil rights movement into the national narrative. It took years of organizing to overcome strong resistance. In 1983 the King Holiday bill was signed into law. Initially only twenty-seven states officially acknowledged the holiday. Not until 2000 did all fifty states recognize the day. |