I'd like to use the occasion of today's Martin Luther King Day holiday to reminisce about the inaugural observation of the King holiday 20 years ago, January 20, 1986 (although King's birthday is January 15, the holiday takes place on the third Monday of every January).

The University of Michigan has always had an extensive series of events to mark MLK Day, including marches, speakers, symposia, and films. Although the greatest number of events are on the actual holiday, others are held in the days before and after. This year's schedule of events gives you an idea of the scope of the activities.

My main recollection of King Day 1986 was of participating in a march up South University, ending up on the Diag. The next day's Ann Arbor News ran a couple of photos of the march, which I have saved to this day (please e-mail me, via the link to my faculty website on the upper-right portion of the page, if you'd like to see a copy). If you look closely enough, I can be seen on the left-hand side of both photos. My hair and beard were a little heavier back then than now, and I wore contact lenses at that time.

The only other social psychology grad student I remember also participating in the march was Jill Klein. I can't pick Jill out among the crowd in the newspaper photos; she's a tad shorter than I am, so she must have been blocked from view.

I also remember going to the keynote addresses in the years up to and including my graduation year of 1989. According to this UM history of MLK Day events, subsumed under the title of "MLK Symposium," these speakers included: William Gray, then a member of Congress and later head of the United Negro College Fund (1987 keynoter); Douglas Wilder, then Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, later Governor, and now, after years out of public office, Mayor of Richmond (1988); and Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly and later Mayor of San Francisco (1989).

Back in 1983, when the U.S. Congress was taking up the bill to create a King holiday, I was still an undergraduate at UCLA. I remember typing up a petition in support of such a holiday to send to one of our elected representatives, and getting family members to sign it. Seeing the bill become law was very gratifying, and my actual experience of the holiday during its early years was greatly enhanced by all the activities taking place at UM.

It's hard to imagine any other universities' MLK Day programs being more extensive than UM's, but I haven't done any rigorous comparisons. Michigan observes MLK Day the way I think it should be observed -- looking backward and looking forward, and trying to bring American society ever closer to realizing Dr. King's dreams.