By Victoria Mejicanos
AFRO Staff Writer
vmejicanos@afro.com
Nearly 60 years after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and decades after a hard-fought campaign to make his birthday a federal holiday, organizers, city leaders and scholars are preparing to celebrate on Jan. 19. Though Martin Luther King Jr. Day events are festive, many are grappling with what King’s legacy means in 2026—and also with the work that is left to be done across the nation.
Marva Williams, an event and production coordinator with the Mayor’s Office of Arts, Culture and Entertainment, said service remains central to the observance.
“Community service is always vital,” Williams said. “That’s what he was about.”
While Dr. King’s legacy is widely recognized and observed today, Morgan State University’s historian, Dr. Edwin Johnson, shared that the path to establishing the holiday was far from easy.
“King remains probably one of America’s most pivotal figures when you talk about American race relations,” said Johnson. “He’s celebrated now, pretty much. A lot of the journey to getting the bill to become a federal holiday has been lost over time. But King wasn’t completely celebrated in the Black community, and he certainly was not completely celebrated in the White community. Not everyone agreed with his tactics.”
Born in Atlanta on Jan. 15, 1929, Michael King Jr. was the son of Georgia-born parents, Michael King Sr. and Alberta Williams King, who were both leaders in the faith community and active in the fight for civil rights. Michael King Sr. changed his name and his son’s name to Martin Luther King after visiting Europe in the 1930s and learning of the iconic theologian who helped ignite the Protestant Reformation in 1517.
Like his father, King believed in taking action to bring true equality and freedom to America.
By 1955 the Morehouse grad and man of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. was leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama. King became an international symbol for peace and nonviolent demonstration with his work beating back the ideals of Jim Crow. At the time of his assassination on April 4, 1968, he was fighting for economic freedom with the Poor People’s Campaign.
The first proposal to establish Martin Luther King Jr. Day was introduced a few days after his assassination but was repeatedly rejected for 15 years before finally being signed into law by former President Ronald Reagan in 1983. The first official observance of the holiday took place on Jan. 20, 1986. According to Johnson, it took another 15 to 17 years before it was adopted nationwide.
Still today the holiday is under attack. In 2025, the 47th president of the United States ordered the National Park Service to stop offering free admission on MLK Day and Juneteenth. Instead, the agency has added the president’s birthday as a free day.
For organizers working to keep that legacy alive today, the holiday is not just a historical milestone, but a responsibility. In Los Angeles, that responsibility is being carried in part by Pamela Bakewell.
Bakewell’s family-led Black-owned media company, Bakewell Media, owns the LA Sentinel. The company recently took over production of the city’s official Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade. This year’s parade theme is “Reclaiming the Dream.”
“We have always had an interest in uplifting the Black community,” said Bakewell. “Our background fits in with our producing it because we care. You have to care that we keep Martin Luther King’s legacy alive, especially during these trying times. And we feel that we are the right choice, and we’re excited to do it.”
The parade will feature prominent guests and partners. KJLH is a local radio station in Compton, owned by Stevie Wonder, who was instrumental in campaigning for the holiday with his 1980 song, “Happy Birthday,” written in King’s honor. KJLH will serve as the primary media partner for the parade. Cedric the Entertainer will also be in attendance, serving as the grand marshall of the parade. Additionally, various Disney characters will be featured in the parade.
Bakewell spoke to the responsibility she felt to continue to honor King’s legacy, as there are attacks on Black history.
“It’s no secret that we have an administration in our federal government that does not value our legacy, as Black people, as we hoped it would,” said Bakewell. “After all the things that we’ve been through as a people, through civil rights, through slavery, through things that are facts. We’re not making this up. We’re not whining or crying. We know that this is not something that we want to see go away, and the only way it’s going to stay alive is if we, as the Black Press, the Black community, keep it that way.”
For Johnson, the holiday has always been more than ceremonies and commemorations, but a moment of reflection both nationally and personally.
“The most memorable speech was Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. I just think it is very relevant each year to revisit the speech and what he said, and for us to kind of check ourselves as a country, to check ourselves as individuals,” said Johnson. “One of the things that King talked about is that we all have an opportunity to do something. We all can’t make these impassioned, you know, oratorical presentations, but we all can do something to make the part of the world that we have access to better, whether it’s your block, your neighborhood, your school, there’s some place around you that you can touch to make our world a better place.”