Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday on November 2, 1983, when President Ronald Reagan signed legislation, following a 15-year campaign led by Coretta Scott King and activists. The holiday has been publicly observed since 1986 on the third Monday of January to honor Dr. King's legacy. January 19, 2026 was the first MLK Day not recognized with public celebration nor televised observance by a sitting United States president.
E-CLUB PROGRAM
PRESIDING TODAY IS: Bonnie Branciaroli, Secretary/Treasurer
Ding! We’re now in session.
Welcome all – visitors, fellow Rotarians and guests alike to this E-Club program!
Remember the Four-Way Test!
At the beginning of each meeting we remind ourselves of the The Four-Way Test. Therefore, please remember to ask yourself always . . .
Of the things we think, say or do:
- Is it the TRUTH?
- Is it FAIR to all concerned?
- Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
- Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
Reflective Moments
“...peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free.”
– Rosa Parks
“Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won. You earn it in every generation.”
– Coretta Scott King
“Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”
– Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, Economic Forum, Devos, 2026
Leadership Quotes
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
“A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations is the only true sovereign of a free people.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Revisiting Martin Luther King Day: January 2026
Every third Monday in January we honor a great man during a national holiday established in his honor in 1986. Martin Luther King Day is celebrated by many Americans as a long holiday weekend. Government and financial employees receive the opportunity to take a long ski weekend in West Virginia! Many of us use the time to work community projects and remember a part of our American history that King brought to the forefront.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday on November 2, 1983, when President Ronald Reagan signed legislation, following a 15-year campaign led by Coretta Scott King and activists. The holiday has been observed since 1986 on the third Monday of January to honor Dr. King's legacy.
Unfortunately, January 19, 2026 was the first MLK Day since 1986 not recognized with public celebration, commemoration, nor observance by a sitting United States president.
In this era of American divisiveness and the retracting of Civil Rights freedoms, have societal issues really changed in the past 63 years since his iconic "I have a Dream" speech in Washington, D.C on a hot summer day in August 1963?
As I wandered through my mobile news articles Monday morning, I was not bombarded with MLK events and nostalgic news clippings of his March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where he called out for civil and economic rights and an end to racism. There were no beautiful quotes and videos scrolling through Facebook that framed a man filled with positive enthusiasm and dreams for a people in a country he imagined could work and live together in harmony. In fact, there was no mention of him at all. There was no room.Take NBC for example: January 19, 2026
•. Trump Threatens 8 European Countries with more Tariffs Unless Greenland is Sold • EU Warns Trump Tariffs Undermines Transatlantic Relations,
"Europe will not be blackmailed."
Or ABC "Good Morning America":
• Possible Invasion of Greenland
But more at home, we saw:
• 1500 US Troops on Standby to be Deployed to Twin Cities... President's threat to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell the ten-day peaceful protest of ICE and CBP to leave the Twin Cities for killing the 37 year-old mother of three, Renee Nichole Good.
After watching and scrolling through the YouTube recordings of both national media stations, and soaking in tidbits of Hollywood shenanigans, Dolly Parton's birthday, Colorado dinosaur bones, multiple weather reports, and the box office hit numbers for the new movie, Avatar: Fire & Ice, ABC finally made a mention of MLK Day with a mini-story about Shirley in LA feeding the homeless. The newscasters did not say his name, and I wondered why.
Mentally bombarded with the countless negative activities I could not even have imagined in 2022, the last time I wrote about King for our annual Martin Luther King Day program for the E-Club, I came away with a heart so heavy I had to do a time-out.Granted, the White House did print a proclamation on their web site, whitehouse.gov., but I wondered how many people would take the time to go find it there. It notes that the current president proclaimed "January 19, 2026, as the Martin Luther King, Jr., Federal Holiday. On this day, I encourage all Americans to recommit themselves to Dr. King’s dream by engaging in acts of service to others, to their community, and to our Nation."
Peaceful Protests in Minneapolis, MN after the shooting of Renee Nicole Good.
Considering this extremely ironic, given the atrocities in our cities to so many people of our communities across this country and the disrespectful overtures toward world leaders prior to the World Economic Forum, I implore we all think about what is happening.
Andrea Gonzalez-Ramirez wrote in The Cut on Monday MLK Day 2026 in a piece entitled, "Is This Really Our Last MLK Day?" that focused on making sense of the increasingly endangered holiday as it relates to vanishing freedoms in an alternate reality so very far from King's generation. She begins:
"In the year since President Donald Trump was sworn back into office, he has wasted no time dismantling many of the societal gains made possible by the Civil Rights movement. It appears he's coming for Black history itself. Though the president can't unilaterally repeal federal holidays without Congress, he paused observance of Black History Month and his administration eliminated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Juneteenth from the National Park Service's lineup of fee-free days (and added his own birthday instead)."
The article moves forward with a Q & A with Dr. Brittney Cooper, professor of women's gender and sexuality studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University, and longtime progressive activist and strategist, Brittany Packnett Cunningham, navigating strategies to protect our communities during federal government overreach.
The link to the article is below, and it is a good read.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Martin Luther King Day...
Say His Name
This is one of my favorite quotes from Marin Luther King, Jr.
It comes from a speech just five weeks before his assassination.
"All life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality."
As Rotarians striving for global peace, we are all social activists. Every time we head out into the community or take a trip around the world, we know we are doing what we can to make the world a better place. I wonder if Dr. King was a Rotarian?
~ Heather Cox Richardson, American Historian, January 19, 2026
~ The Cut, Andrea Gonzalez-Ramirez, January 19, 2026
ABC Morning News
NBC Morning News Now
~January 19, 2026
Martin Luther King Day 2026
NOTES
The Mountain State Rotary E-Club (MSRE) is a member club of Rotary International District 7545 (covering most of West Virginia, excluding the Eastern panhandle) and RI Zone 33, which encompasses a large portion of the eastern sector of the United States.
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