The holiday celebrates the Civil Rights leader’s life and legacy. Observed each year on the third Monday in January as “a day on, not a day off,” MLK Day is the only federal holiday designated as a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer to improve their communities.
The campaign for a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. began shortly after his assassination in 1968. President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later. Initially, some states resisted recognizing the holiday, either giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. It was not until 2000 that all 50 states officially observed the holiday. The national Martin Luther King Day of Service was initiated by former Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Harris Wofford and Atlanta Congressman John Lewis, who co-authored the King Holiday and Service Act. This federal legislation encourages Americans to transform the King Holiday into a day of citizen action and volunteer service in honor of Dr. King. President Bill Clinton signed the legislation into law on August 23, 1994.
Let the Trumpet Sound by Martin Luther King, Jr by Misremembering Dr. King by 
King by 
Desert Rose by Coretta Scott King took the place of her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, as Harvard's commencement speaker just two months after his assassination. Speaking to the 1968 graduating class in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mrs. King addressed the violent deaths of Dr. King and Sen. Robert Kennedy, as well as the inequities built into American institutions. But she also spoke of her hope in future generations working together with united goals, paving a pathway to a better society. (Source GBH News)
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr by A Testament of Hope by 
March: Book One by
#1New York TimesBestseller Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon and key figure of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president. Now, to share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis presents March, a graphic novel trilogy, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and New York Times best-selling artist Nate Powell (winner of the Eisner Award and LA Times Book Prize finalist for Swallow Me Whole). March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book One spans John Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall. Many years ago, John Lewis and other student activists drew inspiration from the 1958 comic book "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story." Now, his own comics bring those days to life for a new audience, testifying to a movement whose echoes will be heard for generations. Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award - Special Recognition #1Washington PostBestseller A Coretta Scott King Honor Book An ALA Notable Book One of YALSA's Top 10 Great Graphic Novels for Teens One of YALSA's Top 10 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults One of YALSA's Outstanding Books for the College Bound One ofReader's Digest's Graphic Novels Every Grown-Up Should Read Endorsed by NYC Public Schools' "NYC Reads 365" program Selected for first-year reading programs by Michigan State University, Marquette University, and Georgia State University Nominated for three Will Eisner Awards Nominated for the Glyph Award Named one of the best books of 2013 byUSA Today,The Washington Post,Publishers Weekly,Library Journal,School Library Journal,Booklist,Kirkus Reviews,The Horn Book, Paste,Slate,ComicsAlliance, Amazon, and Apple iBooks.
A More Beautiful and Terrible History by
Praised by The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Bitch Magazine; Slate; Publishers Weekly; and more, this is "a bracing corrective to a national mythology" (New York Times) around the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a "helpmate" but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband's activism in these directions. Moving from "the histories we get" to "the histories we need," Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and "polite racism" in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice-which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared. By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred. A More Beautiful and Terrible History will change our historical frame, revealing the richness of our civil rights legacy, the uncomfortable mirror it holds to the nation, and the crucial work that remains to be done. Winner of the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize in Nonfiction
No Justice, No Peace by
Nautilus Book Awards' Better Books for a Better World A Movement in Words and Images Award-winning photographer Devin Allen has devoted the last six years to documenting the protests of the Black Lives Matter movement, from its early days in Baltimore, Maryland, up to the present day. The riveting images in No Justice, No Peace provide a lens on the resistance that has empowered Black lives generation after generation. Allen's signature black-and-white photos bear witness to the profound history of African Americans and allies in the fight for social justice and portray the collective action over decades in stunning, timeless portraits. Allen's remarkable photos of today's Black Lives Matter protests, which have been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and twice on the cover of Time magazine, were inspired by Gordon Parks of the Civil Rights Movement, and create a vision of the past and future of Black activism and leadership in America. With contributions from twenty-six bestselling and influential writers and activists of today such as Clint Smith, DeRay Mckesson, D. Watkins, Jacqueline Woodson, Emmanuel Acho, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and more, alongside the words of past writers and activists such as Martin Luther King Jr, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Maya Angelou, and John Lewis, No Justice, No Peace is a reminder of the moral responsibility of Americans to break unjust laws and take direct action. In words and pictures, No Justice, No Peace honors the connection between activism today and that of the past. If indeed hindsight is 20/20, this artistic look back is a lens on history that enlarges our understanding of the lasting predicament of racism in the United States of America. At once deeply intimate and profoundly uplifting, No Justice, No Peace is a visual tribute to Black resistance and a stern missive on the tough, but necessary, road that lies ahead.
True South by
" TRUE SOUTH does several things at once. On one level, it's a biography . . . On another, it's a lucid recap of many of the signal events of the civil rights movement . . . A warm and intelligent book."-The New York Times "No one is better suited to write this moving account of perhaps the greatest American documentary series ever made. . . . Else tells the story with the compassion and eloquence it deserves."-Adam Hochschild, author ofKING LEOPOLD'S GHOST, BURY THE CHAINS, andTO END ALL WARS The inside story of Eyes on the Prize, one of the most important and influential TV shows in history. Published on the 30th anniversary of the initial broadcast, which reached 100 million viewers. Henry Hampton's 1987 landmark multipart television series,Eyes on the Prize, an eloquent, plainspoken chronicle of the civil rights movement, is now the classic narrative of that history. Before Hampton, the movement's history had been written or filmed by whites and weighted heavily toward Dr. King's telegenic leadership.Eyes on the Prizetold the story from the point of view of ordinary people inside the civil rights movement. Hampton shifted the focus from victimization to strength, from white saviors to black courage. He recovered and permanently fixed the images we now all remember (but had been lost at the time)-Selma and Montgomery, pickets and fire hoses, ballot boxes and mass meetings. Jon Else was Hampton's series producer and his moving book focuses on the tumultuous eighteen months in 1985 and 1986 whenEyeson the Prize was finally created. It's a point where many wires cross- the new telling of African American history, the complex mechanics of documentary making, the rise of social justice film, and the politics of television. And because Else, like Hampton and many of the key staffers, was himself a veteran of the movement, his book braids together battle tales from their own experiences as civil rights workers in the south in the 1960s. Hampton was not afraid to show the movement's raw realities- conflicts between secular and religious leaders, the shift toward black power and armed black resistance in the face of savage white violence. It is all on the screen, and the fight to get it all into the films was at times as ferocious as the history being depicted. Henry Hampton utterly changed the way social history is told, taught, and remembered today.
Sing for Freedom by The Revolution of Values by 
Martin Luther King, Jr. by 
Promised land by 
All power to the people! by 
Witness to history. The civil rights movement by