MLK Day 2025: Volunteer Opportunities, Events In Northbrook

NORTHBROOK, IL — Most state and federal offices in Illinois will be closed Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader. The holiday has also become a National Day of Service. Americans are encouraged to volunteer in their communities and champion causes that matter to them most.

In the Northbrook area, here are some ideas for volunteering and things happening on Monday:

• Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service (ages 10 to adult), 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, Northbrook Public Library, 1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook. Celebrate Dr. King’s contribution to our country by participating in a Day of Service. Email Youth Services (youthservices@northbrook.info) to volunteer by helping with activities that will improve the library.
• Make River Trail Better, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Monday, River Nature Trail Center, 3120 Milwaukee Ave., Northbrook. Help make the River Trail better on this official day of community service. Ages 10 & up. Ages under 16 w/adult.
• MLK Day of Service Projects, 9:30 a.m. to noon Monday, Northbrook Methodist Church, 1190 Western Ave., Northbrook. Service projects include: cards for veterans, cleaning medicine bottles for Matthew 25 Ministries, cookies for first-responders, cards for LGBTQ folks, underwear collection for refugees.
• MLK Day of Service, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Monday, Glenview Public Library, 1930 Glenview Road, Glenview. Serve your neighbors through hands-on projects led by local community organizations. Consider bringing a non-perishable item to donate to the Northfield Township Food Pantry. Current pantry needs: ramen, spaghetti, and pancake mix. Drop in.
• Read, Feed & Encourage, 10 a.m. to noon Monday, Historic Wagner Farm, 1510 Wagner Road, Glenview. Donate food and books, join a book exchange, and spread encouragement.
• Believe & Dream Skate, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Glenview Community Ice Center, 1851 Landwehr Road, Glenview. Skate, learn about civil rights leaders, and share your dreams for peace.
• Let's Talk: Remembering MLK, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday, Skokie Heritage Museum, 8031 Floral Ave., Skokie. Investigate primary sources and discuss the ownership of history narratives and public memory as we try to answer the question "Who do we remember and why?" Learn about the life and times of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Chicago Freedom Movement and its ties to Skokie history, and important moments in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Ages 16 and up. Fee: $20 (resident) / $25 (non-resident).
• MLK, Jr. Festival: Let's Dream Together, 10 a.m. to noon Monday, Wayfarer Theaters, 1850 Second Street, Highland Park. Insight Advocacy and Wayfarer Theaters present the inaugural event. Free celebration of Peace and Unity.

In addition to state and federal offices being closed, there will be no mail delivery. FedEx will have modified services on MLK Day, while its Freight, Office, Critical, and Logistics divisions will be open as usual. UPS will be closed for the day, but limited locations and its Express Critical service will be available.

Banks will be closed and both the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ will have the day off.

Retail stores, restaurants and many other businesses are open as usual, although some, including Patch, observe MLK Day as a paid holiday.

This year, MLK Day falls on the same day as Inauguration Day. President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance will be sworn in on the Capitol grounds, which will result in the closures of the Washington Monument and Old Post Office Tower for security purposes.

Other iconic memorials along the National Mall are open, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial at the intersection of Independence Avenue and West Basin Drive SW.

King is the only non-president to have a national holiday named in his honor. He also is the only non-president with a memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. And Martin Luther King Jr. Day is the only federal holiday designated as a day of service.

King’s widow, the late Coretta Scott King, once said the greatest birthday her husband could receive “is if people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds celebrated the holiday by performing individual acts of kindness through service to others.”

Accordingly, the National Park Service waives admission at national parks on MLK Day, and several have volunteer service projects honoring King’s legacy.

The theme of the 2025 Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance is “Mission Possible: Protecting Freedom, Justice and Democracy in the Spirit of Nonviolence.” Events focus on the legacy and unfinished work of King, a driving force behind watershed voting, housing and civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

In the mid-1950s, King led efforts to desegregate the South through non-violent protest. His speeches, including the “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington, are among the most iconic in U.S. history. It took 32 years for the federal government to finally approve a federal holiday celebrating King’s birthday.

At 35, King was the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He was awarded the prize in 1964 for his work to combat racial inequality through nonviolence. During his acceptance speech, he reiterated the importance of nonviolent protests and called attention to poverty.

“I am still convinced that nonviolence is both the most practically sound and morally excellent way to grapple with the age-old problem of racial injustice,” he said. “A second evil which plagues the modern world is that of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus, it projects its nagging, prehensile tentacles in lands and villages all over the world. Almost two-thirds of the peoples of the world go to bed hungry at night.”

The son, grandson and great-grandson of Baptist ministers, King’s birth name was Michael King Jr. He was born to Michael King Sr. and Alberta Williams King on Jan. 15, 1929.

But his father, the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, had visited Germany in 1934 and was inspired by the teachings of Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther, and began calling himself and later his son Martin Luther.

King was jailed 29 times and assaulted four times. Though his message resonated strongly among many, King was often targeted by police officers who saw his call for racial equality as a threat to American society. He frequently found himself in jail for practicing civil disobedience, including in Birmingham, Alabama, where he wrote the "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" that became a key civil rights document.

The FBI tracked King’s every move, intensifying their wiretaps and surveillance operations after the August 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream speech,” regarded by many historians as the most important speech in the 20th century.

King traveled more than 6 million miles, gave 2,500 speeches and published five books and numerous articles. From 1957, when he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference formed to assist the civil rights movement, until his death in 1968, King traveled across the nation spreading the teachings of nonviolent resistance that had been inspired by Gandhi.

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, as he stood on a balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Had he lived, King would have turned 96 on Wednesday, Jan. 15.