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The Chicago Tribune put out a nice article I think many should read. I only took this part but if you want more click
here.
Martin
Luther King Jr. Day is observed with a day off for government employees,
but many other employers don't necessarily follow suit.
According
to a recent survey from the Bloomberg Bureau of National Affairs, about
3 in 10 non-federal employers will give all or most workers Monday off
with pay.
That's a slight gain from 30 percent in 2011 but
significantly higher than in the first years after the holiday was
created. Only 14 percent of surveyed businesses made MLK Day a paid day
off in 1987. That figure reached 30 percent in 2004 and has hovered
there since.
By contrast, about 96 percent of employers surveyed gave Thanksgiving Day as a paid holiday for workers in 2011.
President
Ronald Reagan signed legislation to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a
federal holiday in 1983, and it was first observed in 1986.
Martin Luther King day is January 20th.
"After King's death, United States Representative John Conyers (a Democrat from Michigan) and United States Senator Edward Brooke (a Republican from Massachusetts)
introduced a bill in Congress to make King's birthday a national
holiday. The bill first came to a vote in the U.S. House of
Representatives in 1979. However, it fell five votes short of the number
needed for passage.
Soon after, the King Center turned to support from the corporate community and the general public. The success of this strategy was cemented when musician Stevie Wonder released the single "Happy Birthday"
to popularize the campaign in 1980 and hosted the Rally for Peace Press
Conference in 1981. Six million signatures were collected for a
petition to Congress to pass the law, termed by a 2006 article in
The Nation as "the largest petition in favor of an issue in U.S. history."
At the White House Rose Garden on November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill, proposed by Representative Katie Hall of Indiana, creating a federal holiday to honor King.
It was observed for the first time on January 20, 1986.
The bill established the Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday Commission to oversee observance of the holiday, and Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s wife, was made a member of this commission for life by President George H. W. Bush in May 1989." -
Wikipedia
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