Martin Luther King Jr.

The 2026 Martin Luther King, Jr. Beloved Community Commemorative Service is held at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Monday January 19, 2026. The annual service begins at 9 am CST (10 am EST) and is streamed online.

At last year’s 2025 commemoration, King’s daughter Rev. Dr. Bernice A. King had this to say,

“As we commemorate King Holiday, let us recommit to the mission of protecting freedom, justice, and democracy for all …we must continue to push for a world where every individual can live with dignity and respect. ”

---Dr. Bernice A. King, January 2025.

To honor Dr. King today, we share here the still stinging observations on race in America, as delivered in his March 25, 1965 speech at the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, Alabama following March from Selma,

"If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow.

He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man.

And he ate Jim Crow. And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow … “

- Dr. Martin Luther King, 1965, in speech given in Montgomery Ala, as archived at the King Institute at Stanford and also reprinted at speakola.com. Full speech on youtube linked above; the quoted passage with context begins at time 11:08.)

Cover photo of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr found at wikimedia commons, original from nobel foundation, sweden, 1964 (public domain).