“Don’t allow anybody to cause you to lose your self respect to the point that you do not struggle for justice…You have a responsibility to seek to make life better for everybody. And so you must be involved in the struggle for freedom and justice.”
This year’s celebration will also mark the launch of the museum’s yearlong observance themed Community Over Chaos, highlighting pivotal anniversaries in civil rights history, including the 60th anniversary year of the Selma March and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Established in 1968 by Mrs. Coretta Scott King, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (“The King Center”) is both a traditional memorial and programmatic nonprofit, envisioned by its founder to be “no dead monument, but a living memorial filled with all the vitality that was his, a center of human endeavor, committed to the causes for which he lived and died.”
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is a museum of conscience, an education center, a convener of dialogue, and a beacon of light for inclusive freedom around the globe. Located in Cincinnati just a few steps from the banks of the Ohio River, the great natural barrier that separated the slave states of the South from the free states of the North.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Inauguration Day have only fallen on the same day once since Martin Luther King Jr. Day became a national holiday in 1983. The ACLU is using this rare pairing to advocate for civil rights and civil liberties. In Dr. King’s honor, the ACLU has created a guide to take action and join the effort to create a more perfect union.
