WHEREAS, On Tuesday, January 15, 2019, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been 90 years of age; and

WHEREAS, On April 10, 1970, California became the first state to pass legislation making Dr. King’s birthday a school holiday and, subsequently, a statewide holiday; and

WHEREAS, Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement helped change public policy from segregation to integration, resulting in the repeal of the post-Reconstruction era state laws mandating racial segregation in the South known as the “Jim Crow Laws,” thereby leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, now effective for 55 years, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and other antidiscrimination laws aimed at ending economic, legal, and social segregation in America; and

WHEREAS, Dr. King, in the last months of his life, began organizing a Poor People’s Campaign to, among other things, assemble “a multiracial army of the poor that would descend on Washington—engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be—until Congress enacted a poor people’s bill of rights,” and 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of this campaign; and

WHEREAS, Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement helped change public policy from legal and socially acceptable discrimination and segregation to an open and accessible policy of racial integration leading to equal participation in and access to primary and higher education, housing, employment, transportation, federal, state, and local governmental elections, and other aspects of public policy relating to human rights; and

WHEREAS, Dr. King devoted his life to fighting segregation and injustice by nonviolent means and is an outstanding example of courageous leadership in the face of unrelenting violence and harassment by individuals and governmental institutions; and

WHEREAS, Dr. King is a source of inspiration for all Americans; now, therefore, be it