Martin Luther King, Jr. day is a U.S. National holiday (celebrated on the third Monday of January) designed to honor Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the activist and minister who was assassinated in 1968, and whose accomplishments have continued to inspire generations all over the world.
Dr. King was a Baptist minister born on Jan. 15, 1929 who advocated the use of nonviolent means to end racial segregation, he first came to national prominence during a December 1955 bus boycott by African Americans in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1957, he founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and led the 1963 March on Washington. The most influential of African American civil rights leaders during the 1960s, he was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations, facilities, and employment, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which eliminated the remaining barriers to voting for African Americans. At 35 years old, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. became the youngest person to win the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964. Dr. King, Jr.‘s less that 13 years of leadership were cut short when he was was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. Dr. King the first modern private citizen to be honored with a federal holiday in the United States.
Sources: The King Center, Britannica, & Almanac