ATLANTA (AP) — The U.S. holiday honoring slain black civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. has taken on added meaning for most Americans this year, as they try to make sense of the violence in Arizona that left six people dead and a member of Congress fighting for her life.

Arizona once resisted the notion of a federal King holiday — and last year was the setting for a sharp-tongued debate on immigration. Now the southwestern state finds itself in search of solace after the Jan. 8 attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and constituents meeting with her outside a supermarket in Tucson. The balm of choice is King, a pacifist Southern Baptist preacher whose own life was cut short by gun violence.

“Dr. King’s message was about inclusion and the recognition of human dignity, of human rights and making sure that all of our voices are heard,” said Imani Perry, an African-American studies professor at Princeton University. “I hope people in Arizona, in particular, embrace that part of his message. The politics in Arizona recently have often seemed to revolve around excluding people.”

Monday marks the 25th federal observance of the birth of King, whose words were often met with hate and resistance during one of the nation’s most turbulent and transformative eras. Today, King is one of the country’s most celebrated citizens and the only one to be honored with a national holiday who did not serve as a U.S. president.

“So little of his real politics show up in these annual commemorations,” said Morgan State University professor Jared Ball. “Instead of actually reading what he wrote or listening to what he said, we pick catchphrases and throw his name around. We all feel for the tragic incident that took place in Arizona, but this is happening to people all over the world every day in one form or another.”

King, who was born on Jan. 15, 1929, was killed at age 39. As a pastor in Montgomery, Alabama, King led the 1955-56 bus boycott to protest racial segregation in public transportation that helped launch a widespread movement for civil rights. He led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference from 1957 until his assassination in 1968 — adopting the civil disobedience tactics of India’s Mohandas Gandhi to advance the cause of equal rights.

King now has been dead longer than he lived, and each commemoration adds more distance between his generation and those who came after and directly benefited from his life’s work.

Many people the King holiday to celebrate King’s life and struggle for human rights. Some choose to honor King by following his example of service to their fellow man. For others, the holiday is just an excuse for a long weekend, to take a short vacation or do nothing.

Martin Luther King III, head of The Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, said the Arizona tragedy is a grim reminder that the country has not yet achieved his father’s dream of a peaceful society.

“When incidents occur like what we saw in Arizona, it shows us how much work we must do to create the kind of nation where nonviolence is embraced,” King said.

A national remembrance of the civil rights icon is an opportunity for the country to renew its commitment to King’s cause. Absent that, it’s unclear how his legacy would be remembered, said Rice University history professor Douglas Brinkley.

“The holiday brought the freedom struggle into the main narrative,” Brinkley said. “The day is meant to be a moment of reflection against racism, poverty and war. It’s not just an African-American holiday. The idea of that day is to try to understand the experience of people who had to overcome racism but in the end are part and parcel of the American quilt.”

An AP-GfK poll shows that Barack Obama’s term as the first black U.S. president has not shifted views on the nation’s progress toward King’s dream of racial equality. According to the poll, 77 percent feel there has been significant progress toward King’s dream — about the same percentage as found by a 2006 AP-Ipsos poll (75 percent).

Overall, 30 percent of those interviewed for the AP-GfK poll say they will do something to commemorate the King holiday this year, up from 23 percent in 2006. About three in four respondents said King is deserving of a national holiday.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.