Dear Just Be: Why do we celebrate Martin Luther King Day?

Martin Luther King is known as one of the country’s greatest leaders and civil rights heroes. King was born January 15, 1929. King was always a strong employee of civil rights. In his mid twenties he was the leader of the first great African-American nonviolent demonstration in the United States, the bus boycott. The boycott lasted 382 days. In December of 1956, after the Supreme Court declared the laws requiring segregation on buses unconstitutional, African-Americans and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, and he was subjected to personal abuse, but he stayed strong and persevered.

At age thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of approximately $54,000 to the advocacy of the civil rights movement. It has been said that it is only because of King and the movement that he led that the U.S. can claim to be the leader of the "free world." And it is because of his believes and his great efforts that we celebrate and honor the man that was Martin Luther King Jr.