Religious Leaders Urge Dr. King Fetes

The first federal legal holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. should be a time for celebrations and prayer services focusing on the values of the slain civil rights leader, officials of national Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish groups said.

King, a Baptist minister who helped lead a national fight for blacks’ civil rights in the 1960s, was assassinated in 1968 at the age of 39. After several years of debate, Congress voted late in 1983 to commemorate his Jan. 15 birthday with a federal holiday on the third Monday of the month, Jan. 20 in this first case. It is the first national holiday specifically honoring either a clergyman or a black.

“In his short lifetime, Dr. King’s message began to make sense to many Americans, and now a grateful nation prepares to celebrate his memory,” said the religious leaders’ statement.

“Particularly do we recommend prayer services in churches and synagogues and interfaith memorial convocations so that we can reflect together on the values Dr. King lived and died for,” the statement said.