“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.” -- Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1865.

It was first proposed four days after King's 1968 assassination outside a Memphis motel. It took 15 years until it became a federal holiday.

Martin Luther King Jr., a reverend and civil-rights activist, was assassinated at 39. However, he inspired several movements and political changes.