U.S. Mission closed for Martin Luther King Day

January 11, 2007

The U.S. Mission in Nepal, including the Consular Section, USAID, and the American Center, will be closed on Monday, January 15, to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Day, a U.S. holiday.

The late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an African-American clergyman who worked in the late 1950s and early 1960s to win civil rights for all people through nonviolent means. Reverend King spoke and campaigned tirelessly to rid the United States of traditions and laws that treated black Americans as second-class citizens.

Dr. King used boycotts, marches, and other forms of nonviolent protest to demand equal treatment under the law and an end to racial prejudice. A high point of this civil rights movement came on August 28, 1963, when more than 200,000 people of all races gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., to hear King say: “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveholders will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. ... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Not long afterwards, the U.S. Congress passed laws prohibiting discrimination in voting, education, employment, housing, and public accommodations.

The world was shocked when Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. Ever since, special memorial services have marked his birthday on January 15. By vote of Congress, the third Monday of every January, beginning in 1986, is now a federal holiday in Dr. King’s honor.