Dr. M.L.K. Jr.’s 2024 holiday observance aims to change the cultural climate
2nd January 2024 · 0 Comments
Last week, Dr. Bernice A. King, C.E.O. of The King Center, announced the theme for the 56th annual celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and the 39th King Holiday Observance commemorating her father’s 95th birthday.
The 2024 theme is “It Starts with Me: Shifting the Cultural Climate through the Study and Practice of Kingian Nonviolence.”
Nonviolence is a love-centered way of thinking, speaking, acting and engaging that leads to personal, cultural and societal transformation.
The King Holiday Observance is set for January 4 through January 15, 2024, at The King Center. Dr. King believed that his nonviolent philosophy and methodology were the solution to injustice and violence that would ultimately lead to the creation of the Beloved Community, where injustice ceases and love prevails. Today, his plan is called Nonviolence365TM.
At a time when political violence is constantly promoted by ex-president Donald J. Trump Sr., and carried out by his Make America Great Again (M.A.G.A.) followers, it is tempting to throw caution to the wind, strap up, organize, and fight fire with fire.
It is hard today to turn the other cheek, to tolerate vicious beatdowns by cops, as John Lewis, Hosea Williams, and other freedom marchers endured on Bloody Sunday while marching from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights.
Or how blood-thirsty racist Derek Chauvin snuffed out the life of George Floyd for what: an allegation that he tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill?
Or, closer to home, the murders of Ronald Green and Alton Sterling at the hands of law enforcement officers set off protests locally.
Still, Dr. King’s life-long dedication and demonstrations of nonviolent strategies continue to be the primary way humanity protests heinous injustices.
We saw Dr. King’s non-violence philosophy and methodology at work after George Floyd’s murder on video sparked a reckoning against hatred, racism and wanton bloodlust. Protesters worldwide, across racial, gender and generational lines, turned out and filled the streets demanding justice.
The spectacle of tens of thousands of protesters, voters and potential voters shook the establishment to its core and overrode attempts to let the cops who killed Floyd slide. As a result of political pressure, Chauvin is serving a 22.5-year prison sentence, and fellow officers who helped or did nothing to stop Chauvin are serving prison terms ranging from two to three years.
Even before President Ronald Reagan signed the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Holiday into law in 1983, Black Americans were remembering, celebrating and commemorating the Dr. King, who was murdered at age 38, while supporting sanitation workers’ right to decent wages.
New Orleans was among the first cities to celebrate. The SCLC and other organizations and institutions came together in 1978 to honor the slain leader with parades, church services and community service events.
U.S. Representative John Conyers and Senator Edward Brooke, both Black Americans, in 1968, sponsored the bill to make King’s birthday a holiday. With the help of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization led by M.L.K., they presented a petition of three million signatures supporting a national observance of his life, nonviolent strategies and contributions to the U.S.A. writ large.
However, a predominately white Congress reluctant to acknowledge King’s stature as a worldwide leader and historic icon refused to vote for a national holiday. President Jimmy Carter vowed to make King’s birthday a holiday, but his term ended before he could persuade Congress to honor the civil rights martyr.
Unfettered, King’s wife Mrs. Coretta Scott King, a civil rights leader in her own right, the SCLC and Black Americans kept the political pressure going. Musical genius Stevie Wonder is credited with pushing Congress into action. Wonder’s 1981 “Happy Birthday to You” became a historic anthem calling for the national holiday.
In 1983, Mrs. King presented six million signatures and testified before Congress. She stressed that the national observance was not a Black holiday but a people’s holiday. Indeed, before his death, M.L.K. led the Poor People’s Campaign, calling for economic parity, higher wages, and a better quality of life for poor people.
This year, on King’s National Observance, which occurs every third Monday in January, the holiday falls directly on his birthday, January 15.
The SCLC, officially incorporated here, has a slate of activities planned locally. On January 15, the New Orleans SCLC will unveil and dedicate a historic marker honoring Mrs. Coretta Scott King, who fought for the holiday and kept her husband’s legacy going; the SCLC and others who petitioned, demonstrated and marched for a day of recognition for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Community service events are also planned.
The Reverend Levon LeBan is president of the local SCLC and a member of the city’s M.L.K. Jr. Day Planning Commission. The Rev. LeBan says that M.L.K.’s birthday and holiday were celebrated in the past with two parades. This year, one parade will celebrate Dr. King’s birthday and holiday. R.E.A.L. (“Recreating the Environmental Ability to Live.”), a grassroots organization and parade sponsor for the past 30 years, will lead the procession from Reverend A. L. Davis Park to the M.L.K. memorial site near Jackson Avenue.
Other organizations across the city are honoring Dr. King’s life with community service.
The City Park Commission and The Ogden Southern Museum of Art are hosting M.L.K. Jr. Holiday celebrations with free admission and on-site activities.
The participation of these and other organizations meets the national theme of this year’s national observance, helping to shift the cultural climate.
This article originally published in the January 1, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
