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Today’s AJC Deja News comes to you from the Thursday, Jan. 16, 1969, edition of The Atlanta Constitution.
Today our nation officially honors Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. every third Monday in January with a variety of events: parades, religious services, festivals and the many volunteerism opportunities that mark the holiday as "a day on, not a day off."
Atlanta started celebrating King’s life and legacy on what would have been his 40th birthday, Jan. 15, 1969, following his assassination the previous April. The day’s events consisted of a four-hour service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King served as pastor, and a 2.5-mile parade to the groundbreaking ceremony for a new high-rise apartment building bearing King’s name.
But two moments stood out as Atlanta honored King on that first celebration day. Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, one of King’s closest friends and confidantes, made a public pronouncement that may have sounded surprising to some at the time. And the Georgia Senate paid tribute to the fallen civil rights leader.
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“[Abernathy] dramatically highlighted the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday by pleading for the sparing of the life of King’s assassin,” the Constitution’s Alex Coffin wrote.
“[He] was applauded by some 1,000 persons jammed into Ebenezer Baptist Church as he said: ‘Finally, we have another gift (birthday gift for King). In remaining true to the principles of nonviolence, I call upon the forces of goodwill throughout the land to exert their total influence in seeing to it that the life of James Earl Ray or whoever is proven to have pulled the trigger that felled our beloved leader is spared.’
“Mrs. Coretta Scott King, the widow, nodded her head in agreement as Abernathy made his statement and the entire audience… applauded.” Ray pleaded guilty to King’s murder, receiving a 99-year sentence. He died in April 1998.
The effort to have Jan. 15 declared a national holiday was nascent that day, with the late U.S. Rep. John Conyers telling the Constitution that he would continue pushing a bill creating the holiday through Congress. Nearly 20 years later, King’s birthday was first officially observed on Jan. 20, 1986.
Meanwhile at the State Capitol on that first Atlanta celebration day in 1969, the Georgia Senate remembered King in its own way.
“[He] received a tribute in death that never was accorded him in life when the Senate applauded repeatedly as some of those closest to the slain civil rights leader were introduced on the Senate floor,” Duane Riner reported.
Sen. Leroy Johnson, one of only two black members in the Ga. Senate at the time, told the Constitution “[King has] given hope to black folks of this state and many white men, too. He’s probably done more than any single man to prick the conscience of Americans by teaching us that justice, freedom and democracy as espoused by our founding fathers were meant for all Americans – black, white, rich and poor.”
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