KRA Honors Dr. King’s Life and Legacy

On Monday, January 19, 2026, KRA’s Corporate  office in Maryland will be closed, as well as its Program Operations’ facilities across the county, to observe Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Day as a Federal holiday, which was not always its designation. 

For clarification, a Federal holiday is a day off mandated by Congress for federal employees, which closes government offices.  A National holiday is a broader cultural term for widely celebrated days that aren’t legally-required days off for everyone, which was the case in some states in the beginning, or with private companies.  

However, since KRA’s founding in 1981, the firm decided to celebrate Dr. King’s birthday annually on January 15—or the closest business day—as a National floating holiday, affording its employees the option of a day off for celebration, observance, service, and remembrance. 

Eventually, marking Dr. King’s birthday as a Federal holiday was, in total, a 32-year, hard-won campaign: 

• First Bill: April 8, 1968, Representative John Conyers (D-MI) introduced legislation for a National holiday honoring Dr King annually, just 4 days after his assassination, re-introducing the bill in every legislative session through 1983. 

• Building Momentum: Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday”, released in  1981, emerged as  a powerful anthem for a major campaign—including public rallies and petitions, strong backing from President Carter, and the support of the Congressional Black Caucus— to  establish Dr. King’s birthday as a holiday. 

• Passage: Congress passed the bill in 1983, and President Reagan signed it into law,  creating a Federal holiday on the third Monday in January as MLK Day. 

• First Official Observance: January 20, 1986.  

• Nationwide Recognition: Not until 2000 that all 50 States officially observed MLK Day as a Federal holiday. 

It is interesting to note that Dr. King’s advocacy for peace and human rights inspires events and tributes to his legacy in  other countries, notably Canada (Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver); Hiroshima, Japan; and Wassenaar, the Netherlands. 

KRA invites its community partners, clients, and customers to join us on Monday, by celebrating in cultural, educational, social, and/or religious events that reflect your personal gratitude in these challenging times for Dr. King’s nonviolent activism for equality, justice, and peace for all of us.