Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a remembrance day for the civil rights activist and minister, falls on the third Monday of every January, to honor the most recognizable face of the civil rights movement. However, the national holiday didn’t exist until 1983, 15 years after King’s death in 1968, when President Ronald Reagan signed the King Holiday Bill into law. Sadly, King passed before he was ever able to see the impact of his brave actions. Since then, King has been posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor a civilian of the United States can receive. Nearly 60 years later, we continue to honor his memory and sacrifice for civil rights throughout the nation. American students engage in this holiday away from school, as U.S. schools observe MLK day as a national holiday.

Dr.King’s message is still largely relevant today in many social issues beyond race and gender. A look into his speeches can infer a common theme, his calmness. Dr.King wasn’t known to invoke change through anger, but galvanize the people through reason and passion. A genuine force drove his motivation to seek justice, not the desire to cause chaos.

Today, students of all races participate in political protests and discussion, part of which was inspired by Dr.King himself. Yet, as much as younger generations talk about their acceptance and ‘’wokeness” of these issues, it seems that the concrete facts don’t always play a part in these conversations and actions. 

Today at school, we were asked what we had a dream for, for the future, for ourselves, for society. Dr.King had a dream that we would one day overcome the differences between us which we had used to justify our unequal ways of treatment toward people of color. I have hope that, like Dr.King, we will seek justice towards equal treatment of all people through genuine actions.