By: History.com Editors

1983

MLK federal holiday declared

History.com Editors

Published: February 09, 2010

Last Updated: January 31, 2025

President Ronald Reagan signs a bill in the White House Rose Garden designating a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., to be observed on the third Monday of January.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in Atlanta in 1929, the son of a Baptist minister. He received a doctorate degree in theology and in 1955 organized the first major protest of the civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated nonviolent civil disobedience to racial segregation. The peaceful protests he led throughout the American South were often met with violence, but King and his followers persisted, and the movement gained momentum.

The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

In March of 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to Memphis, Tennessee to lead a group of striking sanitation workers in peaceful protest amid threats against his life. The threats were real. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968.

A powerful orator, he appealed to Christian and American ideals and won growing support from the federal government and Northern whites. In 1963, he led his massive March on Washington, in which he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” address. In 1964, the civil rights movement achieved two of its greatest successes: the ratification of the 24th Amendment, which abolished the poll tax, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education and outlawed racial segregation in public facilities. In October of that year, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He donated the prize money, valued at $54,600, to the civil rights movement.

In the late 1960s, King openly criticized U.S. involvement in Vietnam and turned his efforts to winning economic equality for poorer Americans. By that time, the civil rights movement had begun to fracture, with activists such as Stokely Carmichael rejecting King’s vision of nonviolent integration in favor of African American self-reliance and self-defense. In 1968, King intended to revive his movement through an interracial “Poor People’s March” on Washington, but on April 4 escaped white convict James Earl Ray assassinated him in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Fight for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

It took 15 years of persistent lobbying for MLK Day to be declared a national holiday.

The Fight for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

By: Erin Blakemore

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on November 2nd

1795

James Polk is born

On November 2, 1795, James Knox Polk is born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Polk grew up on his father’s plantation in Tennessee and attended the University of North Carolina, from which he graduated with honors in 1818. Like many presidents before and after him, he worked as a lawyer before entering politics. Polk’s father, […]

1865

Warren G. Harding is born

On November 2, 1865, Warren Gamaliel Harding, the future 29th American president, is born in Corsica, Ohio. In 1891, Harding married Florence Mabel Kling De Wolfe. Florence was influential throughout Harding’s political career and it was at her urging that Harding, who was working as an editor of the Marion Star newspaper, entered politics. In […]

1917

Balfour Declaration letter written

On November 2, 1917, Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour writes an important letter to Britain’s most illustrious Jewish citizen, Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, expressing the British government’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The letter would eventually become known as the Balfour Declaration. Britain’s support for the Zionist movement came from its concerns regarding […]

1947

Howard Hughes’s “Spruce Goose” flies

The Spruce Goose—at one time the largest aircraft ever built—is piloted by designer Howard Hughes on its first and only flight.

Howard Hughes in Cockpit of Spruce Goose

1948

Truman defeats Dewey

In one of the greatest upsets in presidential election history, Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman defeats his Republican challenger, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, by just over two million popular votes. In the days preceding the vote, political analysts and polls were so behind Dewey that on election night, long before all the […]

1960

“Lady Chatterley’s Lover” obscenity trial ends

On November 2, 1960, a landmark obscenity case over Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence, ends in the acquittal of Penguin Books. The publisher had been sued for obscenity in publishing an unexpurgated version of Lawrence’s novel, which deals with the affair between the wife of a wealthy, paralyzed landowner and his estate’s gamekeeper. The […]

1963

Ngo Dinh Diem assassinated in South Vietnam

Following the overthrow of his government by South Vietnamese military forces the day before, President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother are captured and killed by a group of soldiers.  The death of Diem caused celebration among many people in South Vietnam, but also lead to political chaos in the nation. The United States subsequently […]

1986

Grete Waitz wins her eighth New York City Marathon

On November 2, 1986, Norwegian distance runner Grete Waitz wins her eighth New York City marathon. She finished the 26-mile, 385-yard course in 2:28.6, more than a mile ahead of the second- and third-place women in the race. Waitz had won her first marathon in New York in 1978 and she won the NYC marathon […]

Marathon winner Grete Waitz, NY City Marathon 1986.

1989

A nurse’s aide gets life imprisonment for murder

Gwendolyn Graham is sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for killing five elderly female residents of the Alpine Manor Nursing Home near Grand Rapids, Michigan. Both Graham and her criminal and romantic partner, Catherine Wood, had been employed as nurses’ aides at the home. A Texas native, Graham moved to Michigan in […]

2000

First residential crew arrives aboard the International Space Station

On November 2, 2000, the first residential crew arrives aboard the International Space Station. The arrival of Expedition 1 marked the beginning of a new era of international cooperation in space and of the longest continuous human habitation in low Earth orbit, which continues to this day. The space agencies of the United States, Russia, […]

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Citation Information

Article title
MLK federal holiday declared
Website Name
History
Date Accessed
March 25, 2025
Publisher
A&E Television Networks
Last Updated
January 31, 2025
Original Published Date
February 09, 2010

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