These Places Are Closed In Fredericksburg For MLK Day Of Service

FREDERICKSBURG, VA — Most state and federal offices in Virginia will be closed Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader.

Here are all the openings and closings to be aware of in Fredericksburg, Stafford, and Spotsylvania for Jan. 20.

• City of Fredericksburg government offices: Closed on Jan. 1.
• Stafford County government offices: Closed on Jan. 1.
• Spotsylvania County government offices: Closed on Jan. 1.
• Post offices and mail: Closed on Jan. 1.
• Fredericksburg City Public Schools: Closed for winter break through Jan. 3.
• Stafford County Public Schools: Closed for winter break through Jan. 3.
• Spotsylvania County Public Schools: Closed for winter break through Jan. 3.
• Local and state courts: Circuit Court, General District Court and Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court are closed on Jan. 1.
• VRE: The Virginia Railway Express does not offer service on Jan. 1.
• Fredericksburg Regional Transit will not provide transit services on Jan. 1.
• The Fredericksburg Visitor Center will close at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 31 and will be closed Wednesday, Jan. 1.
• Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Memorial Parks: Buildings will be closed through Jan. 12..

• Libraries: Fredericksburg Branch will close at 1 p.m. on Dec. 31 and will remain closed on Jan. 1.
• Trash Collection: Wednesday’s curbside trash and recycling collections will take place. Be sure all items are on curb by 7 a.m. Crews will not return for items not out when truck passes by.
• Christmas Tree Collection will run Monday, Jan. 6-Monday, Jan. 13. After Jan. 13, the special pickup fee of $75 will resume. Call 540-372-1023 before Jan. 13 to avoid fees. Trees are not collected with trash, they are collected separately to be mulched.
• Recycling/Landfill: The Belman Road Recycling Center and the Stafford Landfill will be closed New Year’s Day. Normal operations will resume Thursday, Jan. 2, from 8 a.m.-4 p.m.

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.