Martin Luther King Jr. Day in H-F
Tell us what this holiday means to you and how you will celebrate?
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Many will use the national holiday to honor the civil rights activistby giving back to the community, be it through removing graffiti, picking up litter or doing other service projects.
Because it's both a federal and state holiday, there will be no mail service, government buildings will be closed, and most banks will not be open. Both Homewood and Flossmoor village halls will be closed.
However, Homewood Disposal garbage collection will not be affected so leave your cans at the curb just as you would on a normal week.
Because many use the day as an opportunity to focus on King and his life's work, we'd like to know what Martin Luther King Day means to you? Will you be doing something to commemorate his legacy?
The Holiday's History
Martin Luther King Jr. Day, now a U.S. holiday, took 15 years to create.
Legislation was first proposed by U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) four days after King was assassinated in 1968.
The bill was stalled, but Conyers and U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-New York) pushed for the bill to be passed in every legislative session. It finally passed in 1983, following civil rights marches in Washington. President Ronald Reagan signed it into law, making it the first national holiday honoring someone who was not an elected official.
Despite the national standing, it was not until 2000 that every U.S. state celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day by its name. Before then, states such as Utah referred to the holiday more broadly as Human Rights Day and Civil Rights Day.
Now, the Corporation for National and Community Service has declared it an official U.S. Day of Service.
TELL US: What does MLK Day mean to you? Tell us in the comments below.
READ MORE: 10 Things You Might Not Know about Martin Luther King
In This article
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Village of Homewood
2020 Chestnut Rd, Homewood, IL -
Village of Flossmoor
2800 Flossmoor Rd, Flossmoor, IL -
robb moffett
6:16 am on Monday, January 21, 2013
I think this holiday, this day of celebrating Martin Luther King who stood for recognizing people by their character, and not the color of their skin, we might take a moment to ask why Attorney justice Holder thinks hate crime legislation and the enforcement of hate crime laws need to only focus on those who are not white, and that if a person has white skin, they are not to have any protection under hate crime laws. We could ask why many in the Department of justice refuse to investigate crimes committed against the white population.
Maybe on this special day, we can ask why we have thousands of rapes of white women by non white men, for every occurrence of a rape of a non white women by a white man. Can this not be a good day to ask this question? if not today, then when? can this be a good day to ask why citizens of foreign countries, who never once themselves or their parents or grandparents suffered any discrimination by white America, can get in a plane and come here and be accorded benefits and rights and privileges because of the color of their skin and affirmative action.
maybe today, instead of dredging up abuses of blacks from a half a century ago while omitting all the kind and just and brave acts that occurred by whites, we can address some of the injustices that are being committed today , to people of all colors, whites included.
I have a dream!
Tobias Cichon
11:04 am on Monday, January 21, 2013
Sounds more like you're strictly concerned with crime against whites rather than the colors of the human rainbow, which is an understandable sentiment when you look at statistics in the way you're framing them. However, regardless of our yearning to have an equal society, we must admit the undeniable causation between poverty and criminality (including rape, not just armed robbery and the like), and in poverty demographics, you will see that both blacks and Hispanics EACH comprise three times as many whites. In other words, for each white person in poverty, there are SIX blacks or Hispanics in poverty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#Poverty_and_race.2Fethnicity
As for your "thousands of rapes to one" ratio, I'd like to see the data. Please provide a reference.
Linda T
8:53 am on Monday, January 21, 2013
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom." One of his quotes on my mind today.
Ernie Souchak
9:27 am on Monday, January 21, 2013
'Social uplift' is a communist code word for using wealth re-distribution to buy votes.
Linda T
10:36 am on Monday, January 21, 2013
That's only one (cynical) way of defining it. Carrying that thought to one logical conclusion, I guess it's safe to say Jesus was a communist.
I'm not going to get into an ideological/political argument, I'll just say there are more ways to approach and define social uplift than yours.
Dinkum
9:25 am on Monday, January 21, 2013
The title of the Act tells the story here. It's the Hate Crimes PREVENTION Act. No reasonable person would believe any Act of Congress would prevent violence. Just another example of elected officials passing some new laws that will prove to be ineffectual and misguided voters believing government now "protects them".
"It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people". MLK
Tobias Cichon
11:16 am on Monday, January 21, 2013
"They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dinkum
2:02 pm on Monday, January 21, 2013
Amen MLK. And thanks for posting this TC. This was true back in the 60's and is even more so today as we are ALL oppressed.