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 January 20 marks Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the federal holiday that honors the life and legacy of the American civil rights icon who was assassinated in 1968.

The holiday didn’t come together seamlessly. Efforts from King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, lawmakers, activists and others took years.

Here’s what you need to know about how Martin Luther King Jr. Day became a holiday.

When is MLK Day 2025?

Martin Luther King Jr. Day will be observed on Jan. 20, 2025.

The holiday is observed each year on the third Monday of January, and the commemoration is the only federal holiday that is “designated as a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer and improve their communities,” according to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

How did Martin Luther King Jr. Day become a holiday?

Former U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., introduced legislation to create a federal holiday honoring King on April 8, 1968, just four days after the civil rights leader’s assassination.

Over the next decade, support for the holiday would swell across the country, and several states, including Illinois, Massachusetts and Connecticut, would enact statewide holidays honoring King.

Conyers spent years reintroducing the federal legislation, with support from lawmakers in the Congressional Black Caucus. And in 1979, on what would have been King’s 50th birthday, the bill came up in the House, but it failed by five votes.

The fight to create the holiday didn’t stop at the narrow vote. Coretta Scott King and others campaigned for the holiday and rallied the public.

King would testify before Congress multiple times. She and singer Stevie Wonder, who released his song “Happy Birthday” in support of enacting the holiday, delivered a petition in favor of the holiday with over 6 million signatures in 1982.

The House ultimately approved the holiday in 1983, and though the push to create the commemoration faced some opposition in the Senate, former President Ronald Reagan signed it into law later that year.

When was Martin Luther King Jr. Day first celebrated?

The first national holiday honoring King was celebrated in 1986.

But it took longer than that for states across the country to adopt the holiday, including fights in Arizona, South Carolina and elsewhere, according to the National Constitution Center. The holiday has been recognized in each state since 2000.

When did Martin Luther King Jr. Day become a holiday in Texas?

Texas officially recognized MLK Day in 1991. Today, it remains the only federal holiday designated as a national day of service, encouraging all Americans to volunteer and contribute to their communities.

Why is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January?

The holiday recognizes King’s birthday, January 15.

But Martin Luther King Jr. Day is celebrated on the third Monday in January due to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which former President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law in 1968. It originally designated three federal holidays, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and former President George Washington’s birthday, to be marked on Mondays.

So even though the anniversary of King’s birthday falls on a Sunday, it’s commemorated on Monday like the other holidays under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.

What role did music play in getting Martin Luther King Jr. Day to become a holiday?

According to the National Constitution Center, in 1981, Stevie Wonder released "Happy Birthday to You," making a powerful political and social statement that helped alter U.S. history. The musical genius wrote the song to urge and shame lawmakers and voters to recognize Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a national holiday. Until then, there wasn't a clear majority of lawmakers ready to support the vote needed to establish the holiday.

 In the latest issue of New York Magazine, features writer Lila Shapiro takes an in-depth look at sexual-assault allegations against Neil Gaiman, the acclaimed British fantasist and author whose work has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide and been widely adapted for film and television beginning with Coraline in 2009. In reporting the cover story “There Is No Safe Word,” Shapiro spoke with eight women who shared allegations of assault, coercion, or abuse by Gaiman including Scarlett Pavlovich, who worked as a nanny for Gaiman and his second wife, Amanda Palmer. Gaiman, through his representatives, says these were all consensual encounters. Here, Pavlovich tells her own full story, in disturbing detail, for the first time.

Allegations against Gaiman first came to light last summer in the podcast Master from Tortoise Media. Shapiro says that the contrast between Gaiman’s public persona and the allegations caught her attention, and that she sensed there was even more to the story to tell. She has followed Gaiman’s career and work since she was a teenager; she previously wrote an Encounter with Gaiman and Palmer at the Coney Island Mermaid Parade in 2018. “Gaiman has for decades described himself as a feminist writer. He is someone who spoke specifically to women, who women felt seen by, and who women felt safe with. So I knew immediately there’s this dissonance between who he says he is and these stories,” says Shapiro. Gaiman had a reputation as not only one of the greatest modern comic-book writers but one of the first to attract a large female readership.

Many of the allegations against Gaiman involve domineering violence, a feature of BDSM, “a culture with a set of long-standing norms, the most important of which is that all parties must eagerly and clearly consent to the overall dynamic as well as to each act before they engage in it,” as Shapiro writes. She says that seven of the eight women she spoke with told her they had no interest in BDSM, although at some point they played along. “The defining feature of BDSM is consent, and there’s actually more emphasis on consent than outside BDSM. If just one party consents, then it’s not BDSM but abuse,” says Shapiro.

In January 2023, Pavlovich filed a police report alleging sexual assault against Gaiman during the time she was working as a nanny, though the “matter has been closed” according to a spokesperson. His career has been marginally affected, though he has new series and seasons set to premiere on Amazon Prime and Netflix this year. An ugly divorce and custody battle with Palmer is in its fifth year. The piece also explores the breakdown of Gaiman and Palmer’s marriage during the same period that many of the alleged assaults took place, as well as what Palmer knew about the nature of his relationships outside their marriage.

Elsewhere in the issue, Kerry Howley writes a first-person account of the Los Angeles wildfires, Allison P. Davis looks at the start-up that thinks it can “eradicate loneliness,” and Lauren Smiley examines what drove a mother to relentlessly cyberbully her teenage daughter.

 TikTok's sister app Lemon8 has been sponsoring posts on TikTok encouraging users to migrate to Lemon8 amid a looming ban threat, according to sponsored posts viewed by Axios.

• ByteDance could be betting that regulators and app store companies are so focused on TikTok that they won't pay attention to its other apps.

State of play: In the last few weeks, Lemon8 has been promoting its app to TikTok users through sponsored TikTok videos.

• In one sponsored post, TikTok user @miller.dailylife shares a video with a creator saying, "TikTok actually has another backup app. It's called Lemon8 ... and it automatically signs you in with your TikTok so you can still keep the same TikTok name and things like that. And it's supposed to transfer your followers over. ... Once you add Lemon8, it automatically pops up on your TikTok bio, so that people can just click on it."
• "So, just so you guys know, now that they're trying to do this ban, if you want to have somewhere else to go where the government is not 100% controlling what we see, what we consume ... Just go ahead and go on to Lemon8."

Our thought bubble: ByteDance would probably like to build Lemon8's user base even if TikTok isn't banned.

• But the ads, pegged to recently uploaded videos, suggest they aren't held over from an older, more general marketing campaign.

Between the lines: In November, TikTok began informing users of its sister app, Lemon8, that beginning late that month Lemon8 would be powered by TikTok, and their TikTok usernames would also be used on Lemon8.

• "Some of your data on TikTok will be used to power services on lemon8," the notice says.
• "Your Lemon8 profile link will be shown to your TikTok profile publicly by default," it continues. "You can choose not to show it by editing your TikTok profile."
• A spokesperson for ByteDance said the backend integration between TikTok and Lemon8 was unrelated to the ban.

How it works: Lemon8 features a mix of TikTok-like videos and Instagram-like photos.

• The app, which caters mostly to Gen Z and Gen Alpha users, works similarly to TikTok.
• It includes a "For You" feed for personalized recommendations and a "Following" feed that shows posts from accounts users choose to follow.

By the numbers: Lemon8 is still tiny compared to TikTok, although app engagement has picked up steadily over the past year, according to Similarweb data.

• Lemon8 has averaged a little over 1 million active daily app users since October, about double where it was for the same time period the year prior.

The big picture: The TikTok ban law explicitly states that any app developed or provided by ByteDance is illegal unless it is sold to a company that is not controlled by a foreign adversary.

• But the discussion has largely centered on TikTok — and it's the only company, in addition to ByteDance, that lawmakers named in the law.
• That's in part because ByteDance's complicated corporate structure obscures which apps the company owns and operates.

What we're watching: The Supreme Court may decide to grant President-elect Donald Trump's request to pause the ban, which is set to take effect the day before he takes office.