The first Martin Luther King Jr. Day was Jan. 20, 1986. As we celebrate it Monday, it’s worth reviving a great idea that Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s widow, endorsed the year prior to the first observance of the new federal holiday.

In Harlem, New York, while signing copies of his first book, “Stride Toward Freedom,” Izola Ware Curry stabbed King with a letter opener between his heart and lung. He was taken to Harlem Hospital where his physician, Dr. Aubré D. Maynard, said, “If you had sneezed, your aorta would have been punctured and you would have drowned in your own blood.”