We honor Dr. Martin Luther King as we honor our exceptional Presidents—with a federal holiday. King never held elective office, but giving him an official federal holiday properly honors his vital, irreplaceable life’s work and acknowledges and underscores an important aspect of his struggle: that even though he was a man of vision with extraordinary leadership abilities, as a man of color, Martin Luther King could never have hoped to make a successful run for the American Presidency in his era.
