Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2018: Apple celebrates civil rights leader with homepage dedication

'The time is always right to do what is right'

American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr at a press conference in London, September 1964 (Reg Lancaster/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Apple has changed its entire homepage to mark the life of Martin Luther King Jr.

As the US takes a holiday to remember the civil rights activist, the company has changed the landing page on its website to a black and white picture of King and a quote from him: “The time is always right to do what is right.”

The same spirit was echoed by Apple boss Tim Cook, who posted a tweet reading: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Let’s find the light and the love, together."

Mr Cook has been active in leading Apple's social justice and political efforts, but the company has always held King as a hero. The company has regularly changed its home page in recent years, using various pictures of and quotes from the civil rights leader.

The Apple boss has also spoken about how King's guidance and example has helped him in his personal life, too. Accepting a lifetime achievement award from his old university in 2013, for instance, Mr Cook said he had taken guidance from King's example in fighting for human rights and equality.

In October, Mr Cook told The Independent that the spirit of King's famous quotation – "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" – was an important guide for him, and that he looked to it during darker times.

“I think that history sort of ebbs and flows at time, but the arc always goes in a certain direction. And I think that will happen now as it happened in the 1960s and 1970s, and has in a lot of ways continued to happen," he said.

“Sometimes I think being in the midst of it, it doesn’t feel like it. But looking back, particularly for me, I saw the way that African-Americans were treated in the 1960s and into the 1970s – and still today in too many places. But then arguably the laws also not only allowed it but facilitated discrimination.

“So I’ve seen massive improvement. And my optimism stems from that history – I do think that is the arc across the world. What each of us has to do is do everything we can to hit the accelerator key.

“Life would be so much easier if we just treated everybody with dignity and respect. You think about all the problems in the world – half of them would be solved with just that! Life would be so much better.”