Community Corner

5 Things to Know: Jan. 17

Five Things to Know on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

New Canaan's public schools, and are closed as we mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day, pausing to remember the civil rights leader, as Connecticut residents have since 1986, on the first Monday after Jan. 15 (in fact, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would have turned 82 on Saturday).

We're excerpting from "5 Things" that place the great man's legacy in the Nutmeg State:

  1. "In each year ... the first Monday occurring on or after January fifteenth (known as Martin Luther King Day) ... and any day appointed or recommended by the Governor of this state or the President of the United States as a day of thanksgiving, fasting or religious observance, shall each be a legal holiday ..." — From the state law that describes when the holiday falls. The state legislature would establish Martin Luther King Day as a legal holiday in Connecticut, and later change the date to coincide with the date established by federal law. Interestingly, the section of the federal code establishing the national holiday refers to "Martin Luther King Jr. Day" (including the appropriate "junior" designation to distinguish King from his father).
  2. "To ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination." — Part of the mission statement of the NAACP, as posted on the Stamford branch's website. King served on the executive committee of the NAACP's Montgomery, AL branch starting in the early 1950s. Today, the NAACP-Stamford branch is celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a downtown at the .
  3. "As a slave he [Onesimus Comstock] had no responsibility for his welfare and upkeep. And a lot of the slaves who were released ended up in the poorhouse on the town farm, up on Laurel Road." — JoAnn Rice, an author and music director at St. Michael's Church in New Canaan, talking to Patch about Onesimus Comstock, . A New Canaanite and Revolutionary War veteran, Comstock is buried in New Canaan. King, in his April 16, 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail," wrote: "If the cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail."
  4. "Ensure that the commemoration of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the state is meaningful and reflective of the spirit with which he lived and the struggles for which he died." — A portion of the legal charge of the Connecticut Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Commission, a 19-member panel for which the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities serves as secretariat and consultant.
  5. “An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. Every person must decide, at some point, whether they will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?’ ” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Aug. 11, 1957

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