Benicia municipal buildings, including City Hall, Benicia Community Center and Benicia Public Library, will be closed Monday in observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

City administrative offices will be closed, but emergency services will be available. Those with water and sewer emergencies may call Benicia Police Department, 707-745-3412.

While postal customers will have access to their mailboxes and Benicia Post Office vending machines and drop slots, the office’s lobby will be closed and most mail will not be delivered to homes and businesses.

Most banks and other government operations will be closed in observance of the holiday.

The day honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Baptist minister who became a key figure in the civil rights movement, during which he advocated for nonviolent activism. The holiday is used by many Americans and organizations as a day to perform community service, a move that stems from a quotation from King: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?'”

Turning Martin Luther King Jr. Day into a day of service is part of President Barack Obama’s national service initiative, “United We Serve,” a call first issued in 2013 for residents and citizens to become involved in their neighborhoods during the weekend of the holiday.

Suggestions of ways people can participate are available at http://www.serve.gov.

U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, the Napa Democrat who represents Benicia in the House, said, “Dr. King’s life inspired millions to carry that symbolic, peaceful torch for a freer and more just country. As we honor his life and legacy, let’s remember that his work is not yet complete.

“Our progress can’t just be measured by the civil rights we’ve secured; it must also be measured by whether or not we’ve guaranteed equal economic opportunities for all Americans.

“As Dr. King said, ‘Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?’

“Let’s recommit ourselves to achieving Dr. King’s dream by becoming a nation where everyone has an equal opportunity to work hard and get ahead.” Thompson said.

Though King was born Jan. 15, the date floats so it can be celebrated on a Monday. The holiday, celebrated in individual cities and states as early as 1971, became law in 1983 under President Ronald Reagan and a federal holiday in 1986. Full observance in all 50 states didn’t take place until 2000.

Born in 1929, King became active in encouraging civil rights equality early in his career as a Baptist minister. “Before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the Gospel,” he once said during a sermon, during which he explained his civil rights work as an extension of his ministry.

He was introduced to the Indian activist Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolent activism by Bayard Rustin, another activist, and with the help of the American Friends Service Committee, King visited India in 1959, which strengthened his commitment to that approach to the civil rights struggle.

Among his credits in the movement are leading the 1955 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott and multiple marches, including the 1963 March on Washington, during which he made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech; and co-founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that organized the Selma to Montgomery, Ala., marches. Among the goals were voting rights for African Americans, desegregation of multiple segments of society, labor matters and others that were incorporated into the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Some of these marches and demonstrations led to arrests. In 1958, he narrowly avoided death when a mentally ill woman stabbed him with a letter opener. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had his telephone tapped in 1963, and later, FBI chief J.Edgar Hoover sought to discredit King after he failed to find ties between the Civil Rights movement and the Communist Party.

King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 because he sought peaceful ways to end racial inequality. He challenged segregated housing in Chicago, Ill., and poverty throughout the nation. He later began to speak out against the Vietnam war.

King was planning “the Poor People’s Campaign,” a large gathering in Washington, D.C. in 1968, but he was slain April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn. James Earl Ray was convicted of the killing, and in 1999 Loyd Jowers was found in a civil trial to be complicit in a conspiracy against King, though that ruling has been discredited.

Posthumously, King has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.