For those of us who remember personally or have read and studied about Dr. King’s life and legacy, it is an amazing story of American courage and perseverance. It is fitting, perhaps, that the story of why we have a Martin Luther King holiday dedicated to his memory is also a story worth telling.
Congress declared a King holiday in 1983, fifteen years after his assassination. Why did it take so long? After all, the other legislative memorial to King’s life, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, passed Congress shortly after King’s death on April 4. For civil rights supporters, the idea of a Martin Luther King memorial day was very important. As a group, for reasons ranging from apathy to open racism, Americans seemed unwilling to support further civil rights legislation by the 1970s. King’s friends and supporters, therefore, fastened onto the idea of national holiday so that, even if the civil rights movement was not moving forward, the symbolism of a unique day dedicated to King’s memory might prevent it from losing ground.
Opponents of the Martin Luther King Holiday
There were opponents to the idea of a national holiday, of course. Political conservatives, including such well-known opponents as Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Jessie Helms of North Carolina, brought back all the old lies from the 1960s in their efforts to discredit King’s life. They claimed he was a communist; a charge consistently disproven that, nevertheless, they refused to abandon. Opponents also asserted that King had preached violence and taught people disrespect for the law and for justice. Given King’s long-standing commitment to the philosophy of nonviolent protest, this first claim regarding violence requires no further refutation.
The idea that King taught disrespect for law and justice is more complex. Not because it’s true but because it’s a more clever argument. The sleight of hand here is getting people to mentally link law and justice and believe they are the same thing. Clearly, this is not so. Examples of unjust laws litter the historic landscape, both in the US and internationally. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” King addressed this issue: “You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. . . . One may well ask ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’”
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Here is how he answered: “The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” In his letter, King went on to address how to differentiate between just and unjust laws. “Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” As an example, “All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.”
Others Excuses Against a Martin Luther King Holiday
In addition to the bogus assertions casting doubt on King’s character, some opponents of the holiday were petty enough to claim it would cost the public money by giving federal employees a holiday. Others claimed King was unworthy of the level of recognition given to men like George Washington and Christopher Columbus who already had days in their honor. (This last claim again seems nonsense today, given all we’ve learned about the legacy of Columbus in the past few decades. But it was 1983 and much of that was still in the future.)
By 1983, both the House of Representatives and Senate had agreed on a bill creating a national holiday. Almost all Democrats were in favor, while Republicans split roughly fifty-fifty on whether to support the holiday. (Among names of conservative politicians recognizable today, it is interesting to recall who fell on each side of the issue. Both Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich voted in favor, while John McCain and Ron Paul voted against.) One question remained. Would the president, Ronald Reagan, sign the bill?
Reagan was no friend of civil rights, to say the least. He once blamed King for his own death, stating that his murder “was a great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order and people started choosing which laws they’d break.” Reagan also tried to weaken various civil rights laws at times, and Congress passed others, modest as they were, only over his veto. His views on civil rights seemed to vary depending on the political composition of the audience to whom spoke. Recognizing that opposing a Martin Luther King holiday was a lost cause, however, he signed the bill on November 2, 1983.
The Last Word
To return to where we began let us allow King’s widow, Coretta, to explain why observing the King holiday still matters. Her husband, she said, “spoke to us all” and was the first American “to lead a mass-based movement which nonviolently struggled for justice and achieved significant social and legal reforms that improved the lives of millions.” Mrs. King also pointed out, “People who are yearning for freedom everywhere regard Martin as an outstanding example of what is right about America.” To those who complained about the expense or inconvenience of observing the holiday, she said, “Is it too much to ask that one paid holiday per year be set aside to honor the contributions of a black man who gave his life in an historic struggle for social decency? I think that deep in our hearts, we all know the answers to the questions I have just raised.”
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