Many changes took place in America because of King's leadership. In 1986 when Ronald Reagan was president, Congress passed a law establishing Martin Luther King Day, a national holiday. The holiday falls on every third Monday in January.
In today's parlance, King's movement would be called "faith-based." King's movement was explicitly religious, rooted in churches and Christian morality. King's ever-growing congregation laboured for reform in Montgomery, in Alabama, and then all across the US.
King aimed to unite a divided America behind the goals of the founding fathers of the country.
His dream is rooted in the ideas of human equality, individual freedom, and the consent of the governed.
Within a span of 13 years, from 1955 to his death in 1968, he was able to expound, expose, and extricate America from many wrongs.
Today African-Americans have federal legislation which provides access and legal protection in the areas of public accommodations, housing, voting rights, schools, and transportation.
Image: Coretta Scott King and her husband Martin Luther King in Oslo in 1964.
Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Also read: Where Mahatma Gandhi's soul still lives
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