“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.

The Anthony, Canutillo, Clint, El Paso, Gadsden, Fabens, Ysleta and Socorro independent school districts will be closed for the holiday, as well as Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso and the University of Texas at El Paso.