Jan. 18, 2021, marks the 26
th anniversary of the MLK Day of Service, held nationwide to observe and celebrate the late Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and legacy. The iconic civil rights leader would have been 92 this year. King was born on Jan. 15, 1929, in Atlanta, GA.
After tremendous activist campaigning over a period of 32 years, King’s birthday was enacted by Congress and signed into law by Pres. Ronald Reagan as a federal holiday in1983. Establishing the MLK holiday was a hotly contested objective with many legislative sponsors often experiencing death threats and property damage.
After a vicious backlash over a three-year period, the lone Black elected official in Utah, state Sen. Terry L. Williams (my brother) was joined by Coretta Scott King, the great dame of the Civil Rights movement, in Utah’s ultimately successful struggle to ensure the state holiday law passed in 1986.