Martin Luther King, Jr., National Day of Service

MLK Day is the only federal holiday designated as a National Day of Service to encourage all Americans to volunteer to improve their communities.

According to AmeriCorps, "During the last quarter-century, the MLK Day of Service has grown, and its impact increased as more Americans embraced the idea that citizenship involves taking an active role in improving communities."

Dr. King once said, “Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

His message and his work left a mark on many aspects of our society and resonate today just as much as they did decades ago.

For MLK Day 2024, a group of United Community bankers visited the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, GA to learn more about Dr. King's life, his mission and his legacy.

Additionally, over 3,000 bankers were encouraged to volunteer in their local communities and the United Community Bank Foundation donated $5,000 to each of the following museums across the Southeast:

• Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Ala.
• Wells’ Built Museum of African American History and Culture in Orlando, Fla.
• The King Center in Atlanta, Ga.
• International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, N.C.
• International African American Museum in Charleston, S.C.
• The Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library in Nashville, Tenn.

These museums feature a variety of exhibits that tell the story of the civil rights movement and its impact on American society.

"During the less than 13 years of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s leadership of the modern American Civil Rights Movement, from December 1955 until April 4, 1968, African Americans achieved more genuine progress toward racial equality in America than the previous 350 years had produced. Dr. King is widely regarded as America’s pre-eminent advocate of nonviolence and one of the greatest nonviolent leaders in world history." - The King Center

It is important to note that Dr. King went to Memphis to support African American garbage workers, who were on strike to protest unsafe conditions, abusive supervisors, low wages and to gain recognition for their union. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee he was advocating for economic justice for all Americans.

In the 1960s, the sit-ins, Freedom Rides, mass marches, and voter registration drives eventually led Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Dr. King was proud of the civil rights movement’s success in winning the passage of those critical laws.

But he realized that neither law did much to provide better jobs or housing for the large numbers of low-income African Americans in the cities and rural areas. He recognized the limits of breaking down legal segregation.

“What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?” Dr. King asked.

He also said, “Negroes are not the only poor in the nation. There are nearly twice as many white poor as Negro, and therefore the struggle against poverty is not involved solely with color or racial discrimination but with elementary economic justice.”

Writing in The Washington Post in 1983, Coretta Scott King provided a vision of how the holiday honoring her husband should be observed:

"The holiday must be substantive as well as symbolic. It must be more than a day of celebration . . . Let this holiday be a day of reflection, a day of teaching nonviolent philosophy and strategy, a day of getting involved in nonviolent action for social and economic progress."