Martin Luther King - 1929-1968

Making Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a national holiday recognized the importance of his life and writings in an appropriate manner. One is sometimes astonished to remember, thinking back on his relatively brief public life, from Montgomery in 1955 until his death in Memphis in 1968, that the Civil Rights movement was already well on its way when King emerged among a host of equally remarkable men and women as its principal figure.