Martin Luther King, Junior’s birthday has been a federal holiday since the early 1980s. But, members of the General Assembly are hard at work.
The legacy of Martin Luther King, Junior is a topic that members of the General Assembly often return to at the beginning of each session, a time when senators and delegates take the floor to offer their own thoughts and memories.
"Between 1953 and 1967, he visited over a dozen localities in Virginia," Delegate Delores McQuinn, a Democrat from Richmond, said. "A multi-city tour of Virginia was planned for March 1968 when he decided to go to Memphis to support sanitation workers protesting working conditions."
Delegate A.C. Cordoza is the only Black Republican in the General Assembly.
"The ideas that he was murdered for have become the cornerstone of the heart and soul of America," said Cordoza. "They are now our baseline, the standard on which we judge all things. The same thing happened to Lincoln. So often, the death of a visionary is the last cry of a dying evil."
Many of the speeches noted that Martin Luther King Day is especially significant this year because Virginia now has a Black Speaker of the House and a Black Lieutenant Governor, in addition to a record number of Black senators and delegates.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
