Martin Luther King Jr. Day in St. Charles
Tell us: What does this holiday mean to you and how will you celebrate it?
By Rachel Stern rachel.stern@patch.com
Monday, Jan. 21, is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
For some, the national holiday honoring the prominent civil rights activist is a time to give back and serve the community, be it through removing graffiti or picking up litter in a local park.
For others, it’s an opportunity to educate themselves about King and his life's work. And for others, it’s a time to just kick back and enjoy the prolonged weekend.
In St. Charles, it will be business as usual in City Hall, although the City Council and council committee meetings normally held Monday night have been moved to Tuesday.
For St. Charles Community Unit School District 303, it is a day off school for students.
So, tell us: What does Martin Luther King Jr. Day mean to you? What are you doing to commemorate King’s legacy?
The Holiday's History
Martin Luther King Jr. Day, now a U.S. holiday, took 15 years to create.
Legislation was first proposed by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, four days after King was assassinated in 1968.
The bill was stalled, but Conyers, along with Rep. Shirley Chisholm, D-N.Y., pushed for the holiday every legislative session until it was finally passed in 1983, following civil rights marches in Washington.
Then-President Ronald Reagan signed it into law. Yet it was not until 2000 that every U.S. state celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day by its name. Before then, states like Utah referred to the holiday more broadly as Human Rights Day.
Now, the Corporation for National and Community Service has declared it an official U.S. Day of Service.
TELL US: What does MLK Day mean to you? Tell us in the comments.
Wendy Stebbins
12:35 pm on Monday, January 21, 2013
YOUR CORRESPONDENT SHANNON STEBBINS MADE A DIFFERENCE ON MARTIN LUTHER KING,JR.'S BIRTHDAY.
What does this day mean to me? In addition to the obvious reminder of my responsibility to get out there and DO SOMETHING, I am touched by the memory of one of your writers, Shannon Scott Stebbins. When he was at Lake Forest Academy Prep School, he was disturbed by the fact that the school was NOT honoring Dr. King by making it a holiday, thus no school. He went to the headmaster and told him this was wrong. His passion, vigor and heartfelt insistence, made the school honor Dr. King that year and since. It is a holiday and there is not school on that day
Wendy Stebbins
P.S. Of course, those of us who know Shannon wonder if his actions were duplicitous. He has always been known to like a day off here and there !.
Meredith Castle
7:07 am on Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Pretty clear MLK day means nothing to the fine people of St Charles.