Jan. 16 will be the 31st celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day since former President Ronald Reagan made it a federal holiday in 1983 and it was first celebrated in 1986.
On MLK Jr. Day, people celebrate what King did to break the color barrier and get equal rights for all people.
For finance junior Tameron Williams-Baker, this also means seeing how far society has advanced since the civil rights movement.
“To see what he had to go through for us to get here shows us how much sacrifice (that) was put into one group of people,” Williams-Baker said.
Marketing junior Nicholas Reeves said MLK Jr. Day means leaving an imprint on the community and how the modern community has evolved through time.
“I try to think of ourselves — African-American men — as innovators and leaders in all aspects of life,” Reeves said. “If I could characterize after someone, it would be MLK Jr.”
One reason modern society has been able to advance this far is because of President Barack Obama and his two terms in the Oval Office, political theory and constitutional democracy senior Terrance Warren said.
“It’s a recap of everything that we’ve been through as African-Americans,” Warren said. “It just forecasts over time from what he has set in place for us.”
Warren said with Obama’s presidency coming to an end, this and future MLK Jr. days hold "more weight” than they might have had in the past.
“Now you can see the correlation of what Barack’s legacy means to the African-American progression in the United States and what Martin Luther King meant to us,” Warren said. “I see Barack Obama as paving the way just like Martin Luther King did, because he did it with class.”
Warren said Obama did much of what MLK Jr. did during the civil rights movement, wanting to unify everybody and be released from another “set of chains.”
“We were released from slavery, from the abolition, we were released from Jim Crow laws when MLK Jr. and Malcolm X did what they had to do,” Warren said.
Graphic design sophomore Demarco Jackson said also it gives people more of an opportunity to unify and stand up for their rights.
"A lot of people are hurt, a lot of people are upset about him (President-elect Donald Trump) being the president," Jackson said. "There's no saying what can possibly come from it."
However, Jackson said as of right now he's still optimistic of how the Trump presidency could turn out and possibly for MLK Jr. days in the future.
Warren said black people today are still facing racism, and the advancements and achievements of MLK Jr. and Obama have helped society identify who’s still living in the past. He said he thinks their achievements help highlight the issues of today. This leads more people to become more educated about what’s going on in the world, Warren said.
Warren said future MLK Jr. days are going to hold more weight because of the racial tensions that have come up in recent times.
“Being black in America … you’re placed in a certain box and people have always said we shouldn’t get MLK Jr. Day, we shouldn’t get black history month,” Warren said. “We are more separated now than we ever were.”
For Warren, this means making sure MLK Jr. Day is used to reflect on the past accomplishments of MLK Jr. before moving forward.
“We’re going to try and follow that same path, because he got things done,” Warren said.
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Williams-Baker, who’s also the president of The Gentlemen’s club at MSU, MLK Jr. said the club and MLK Jr. Day represents what MLK Jr. envisioned when he fought for equal rights among all races.
“We want our members to step up,” Williams-Baker said. “We stand for minorities to better represent themselves and kind of put themselves in a better light.”
