BALTIMORE — Former Delegate Kenneth L. Webster, who authored legislation to make Maryland the second state to recognize the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as a holiday in 1974, has died. He was 76.

His wife, Phoebe, says her husband died Saturday morning of kidney failure at a Baltimore hospital. The Baltimore Democrat and former Air Force veteran of the Korean War was a state delegate from 1970 to 1978.

Carl O. Snowden, the director for civil rights in the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, says long after Webster left public office, he continued to champion racial equality and the poor, organizing demonstrations at the state capital. He also worked to preserve King’s memory in the state.

Funeral arrangements have not yet been completed.

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