These Places Are Closed In McLean For MLK Day Of Service

MCLEAN, 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.

McLean Community Center's 2025 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration features a performance of “RISE” by Memphis-based Collage Dance Collective at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 18. The ballet is performed to the recorded audio of Dr. King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, which was delivered in Memphis the day before his assassination in 1968. Tickets are $25, $20 for students and seniors and $15 for MCC district residents. The Alden is located inside the McLean Community Center, 1234 Ingleside Ave.

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.

Fairfax County Offices: Closed on Jan. 20.

Fairfax County Public Schools: Closed on Jan. 20

McLean Community Center and The Old Firehouse Center will be closed on Monday.

ABC Stores: All Virginia ABC retail stores will be open their regular hours Jan. 20

Courts: Fairfax County courts are closed on Jan. 20.

Department of Motor Vehicles: Virginia DMV locations will be closed on Jan. 20.
Fairfax Connector: Buses will operate on a Holiday Weekday Schedule on Monday, Jan. 20. The only routes running on Monday are 101, 109, 151, 152, 159, 161, 162, 171, 301, 305, 306, 308, 310, 321, 322, 334, 340, 341, 350, 351, 352, 353, 371, 401, 402, 423, 427, 462, 463, 467, 507, 552, 553, 557, 558, 559, 574, 605, 610, 615, 622, 625, 630, 642, 651, 660, 662, 671, 672, 703, 721, 803, 901, 921, 924, 937, 950, 951, 952, 954, 983, RIBS 1, RIBS 2, RIBS 3, RIBS 4 and RIBS 5.

Walker Nature Center: Nature House will be closed on Monday.

Libraries: Fairfax County Public Library locations will be closed on Monday.

Metro: Metro trains and buses will operate on a Saturday holiday schedule on Monday. Metrorail will operate from 5 a.m. to 12 a.m. Metrobus supplemental trips will be operated in addition to regular Saturday trips.

Park authority: All county parks are open on Monday, but the Burke Lake Visitor Center/Marina, Clemyjontri Carousel, Colvin Run Mill Sully Historic Site and the Green Spring Gardens Horticultural Center/Historic House are closed on Monday.

Post offices: Closed on Monday

Recreation centers: Fairfax County recreation centers will be open for regular hours on Monday.

Trash and recycling: There will be no collection for county customers. For private trash collection services schedule changes, contact your hauler.

Trash and recycling centers: The I-66 Transfer Station and the I-95 Landfill Complex will be open on Monday.

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.