
Julia Williams
Editor-in-Chief
The third Monday of January — this year’s Jan. 20 — serves as the day to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr, which 40th U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed into law in 1983 — just five days after King Jr’s birthday, Jan. 15.
On this holiday, various businesses and educational institutions around the Kansas City Metropolitan area — as well as across the nation — close their doors to pay homage to this Nobel Peace Prize winning, civil rights movement leader who fought for African American equality in a 1950s post-civil war America.
A few of the local businesses and schools closed on Monday included the City of Kansas City offices, Scuola Vita Nuova Charter School (SVN), all Kansas City Public Library locations and Frontier School of Innovation, among others. Area trash and recycling pick-up was additionally delayed one day throughout the week in observance.
However, one 18th and Vine district, 27-year-old rhythmic exhibition — the American Jazz Museum (1616 E. 18th St.) — opened special hours from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday. This decision was to highlight King Jr’s passion for the jazz genre, according to a release from the museum, and the style’s ties toward unification and freedom — two concepts, which he continued to fight for.
In 1964, King Jr was invited to speak at the first Berlin Jazz Festival — also known as JazzFest Berlin, now in its 60th year, which works to highlight past, present and future trends within the world of jazz — in Berlin, Germany.
Within this speech, which many modern jazz connoisseurs deem as pivotal for both the genre and for the civil rights movement, King Jr referred to jazz as “Triumph music.”
The American Jazz Museum included a portion of this speech within its release, Sunday, Jan. 19 — which was given by King Jr in Berlin:
“Jazz speaks for life. The blues tell the story of life’s difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph,” Martin Luther King Jr said, 1964 Berlin, Germany.
For additional information on the American Jazz Museum, including current and upcoming exhibitions, visit its website: https://www.americanjazzmuseum.org/.