Skip to content
The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen
Menu
  • Home
  • News
  • Community
  • Schools
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Obituaries
  • Sports
  • Mill
  • Flora
  • Print Archive
  • About
Menu

MLK by the numbers

Posted on January 14, 2010January 14, 2010 by Staff

Chris Fitzsimon
81 – years since Dr. Martin Luther King was born on Jan. 15, 1929
47 – years since King wrote “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” on April 16, 1963
47 – years since King led the March on Washington on Aug. 8, 1963
42 – years since King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968
27 – years since the North Carolina General Assembly voted to establish King’s birthday as an official state holiday in 1983.
27 – years since President Ronald Reagan signed the federal King Holiday into law on Nov. 2, 1983
10 – years since South Carolina became the last state to officially recognize the King Holiday in 2000
33 – percent of employers who give all or most workers a day off on the King Holiday (Bureau of National Affairs, Jan. 9, 2007)
7 – number of statewide elections in North Carolina since the King Holiday was established in 1983
9 – number of members of the N.C. Council of State, all statewide elected officials
63 – total number of elections of Council of State members since the King Holiday was established
2 – number of Council of State elections won by an African-American (Ralph Campbell, elected State Auditor, 1992, 1996 and 2000.)
28 – number of major-party nominees for governor or lieutenant governor since the King Holiday was established in North Carolina in 1983
0 – number of major-party nominees for governor or lieutenant governor since the King Holiday was established who were African-American
14 – number of General Assembly sessions in North Carolina since the King Holiday was established in 1983
28 – total number of elections of speaker of the house and president pro tem of the Senate since the King Holiday was established
2 – number of elections for House speaker or Senate president pro tem won by African-Americans since the King Holiday was established (Dan Blue, elected House speaker in 1991 and 1993)
43 – years since King said in his book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? that “the curse of poverty has no justification in our age… The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”
39,108,422 – number of people in the United States living in poverty in 2008 (U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey)
13 – percent of people in United States living in poverty in 2008 (Ibid)
1,301,929 – number of people in North Carolina living in poverty in 2008 (Ibid)
14.6 – percent of people in North Carolina living in poverty in 2008 (Ibid)
11.2 – percent of white Americans living in poverty in 2008 (Ibid)
24.7 – percent of African-Americans living in poverty in United States in 2008 (Ibid)
9.8 – percent of white North Carolinians living in poverty in 2008 (Snapshot of Employment, Poverty, Income, and Health Coverage in North Carolina, N.C. Justice Center)

Web Archive

© 2025 The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme