Every year on the third Monday of January, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is celebrated. Although all schools and government offices schedule the day off, not many people know much about the history of this holiday or the long fought battle to get this as a recognized holiday.

  According to Infoplease.com, “Congressman John Conyers, Democrat from Michigan, first introduced legislation for a commemorative holiday four days after King was assassinated in 1968.” However, many people did not approve of such a day.

    Some did not approve because King was African-American, others because they thought there should be a commemorative holiday for Civil Rights in general, not for one particular person. Still other people thought that giving a private citizen a national holiday was against tradition because at this point only George Washington and Christopher Columbus had their own holidays. The list of reasons King should not have his own holiday was long and included many different perspectives. Because of this, the bill was stalled in Congress. Although some individual states passed bills to celebrate a day dedicated to King, no national bill was passed.

    King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, and many of his friends and supporters tried for many years to get a law passed to create such a holiday for him. They created petitions with a total of six million signatures. They compromised on points of the bill such as the date, which got moved from King’s birthday on the 15, to the third Monday of January. Finally after 15 years of fighting, the bill was passed and signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.

   Unfortunately, the law did not go into effect until 1986. Even then, some states used different names for Martin Luther King Jr Day, such as Civil Rights Day. It was not until 2000, when “Utah became the last state to have a holiday named after Dr. King when ‘Human Rights Day’ was officially changed to ‘Martin Luther King Jr. Day.’” says Wikipedia.org.