Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, located just off the National Mall in Washington D.C.

Every year on the third Monday of January, we gear up as a nation to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. While the holiday honoring the civil rights leader and his legacy has been a staple of the American calendar for decades now, the path to establishing a day to honor King was long and fraught with many challenges.

The calls for a day in King’s honor begin only four days after his April 4, 1968 assassination when Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) alongside Senator Edward Brooke (R-MA) introduced a bill to Congress to create a federal holiday honoring the late activist. Although initially unnoticed, Rep. Conyers did not waver in his efforts and was supported by the Congressional Black Caucus in his push to establish a federal holiday recognizing King. In fact, three years following Rep. Conyers’ first attempt to establish a King holiday, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King has famously led from the moment of its founding to the day he died, handed Congress a petition with around 3 million signatures in favor of a federal King holiday.

However, despite the setbacks being faced at the federal level, many cities and states honored King around the anniversaries of his birth and death with their own celebrations. Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s widow, founded the King Memorial Center in his hometown of Atlanta and would go onto sponsor the first observation of MLK Day in January 1969 -- nearly a year after his assassination. The following year, St. Louis became one of the first cities in the country to establish a city holiday honoring King. Additionally during the 1970s, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Connecticut became the first states to establish statewide holidays to celebrate King.

Washington D.C. was also among the cities that joined the early fight to honor King. As the location of King’s famous “I have a dream” speech and a majority black city, Washington D.C. was one of many American cities faced with extreme trauma, shock, and betrayal at the murder of Dr. King. Merely days before his assassination, King spoke at the Washington National Cathedral to raise awareness for the Poor People’s Campaign, a march on Washington, D.C. to demand justice and resources for those affected by poverty in the United States. In fact, in the immediate aftermath of King’s murder, the residents of Washington D.C. called upon their local officials to honor King with a city wide holiday on April 4th -- the anniversary of his death. Although this issue was not resolved within the years following King’s death: unofficial celebrations and commemorations took place throughout the city as local activists encouraged Washingtonians to stay home and not go to work on April 4th in honor of King.

Dr. King speaking at the Washington National Cathedral on March 31, 1968

In 1972, Washington D.C. became home to the first public building named after King in the United States -- the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library -- owing to the years of advocacy from its black communities. When the D.C. Public Library Board of Trustees began seeking name suggestions for the new main library building, city residents organized a successful letter writing campaign calling on the city to name the library in King’s honor. A seven year old girl, Regina, notably wrote in her letter, “I think it is a shame that Dr. King cannot have anything dedicated to him. He has been away for nearly two years now and you and your fellow bureaucrats still haven’t done anything in memory of our friend, Dr. King.”

In spite of the efforts made by black communities from across the country, a holiday in King’s honor faced opposition at the federal level. Coretta Scott King and Rep. Conyers had continually fought an uphill battle to establish a federal holiday in honor of King. In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter would pledge support for creation of a King holiday, allying himself with Coretta Scott King as she testified before joint hearings of Congress and organized national support for the bill. However in 1979, the bill originally was defeated by a mere margin of five votes in the House of Representatives.

At this time in the American public, King was still seen as a “trouble-maker” and “agitator,” largely different to the current day. A federal holiday honoring King would be the first of its kind for a civilian which many in Congress argued would go against American tradition. Additionally, many American lawmakers argued the financial impracticality of the holiday, citing that it would be too expensive to implement such a paid holiday for federal employees.

However, Coretta Scott King did not stop fighting for her late husband’s legacy and the tide would turn with the advent of the 1980s. In 1980, Stevie Wonder released the song “Happy Birthday,” dedicated to King. This caused a surge of public support towards the creation of a King holiday. Having joined forces, Coretta Scott King and Wonder delivered a petition with six million signatures of those in support of the holiday to the Speaker of the House in 1982. Furthermore, 1983 saw activists flocking once again to Washington D.C. to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the March on Washington and the 15th Anniversary of King’s murder repespectively. Subsequently, the bill that Rep. Conyers had brought to Congress year after year was reintroduced and passed in the House of Representatives with a vote of 338-90.

The bill encountered a more contentious environment in the Senate however with Republican Senators John P. East and Jesse Helms of North Carolina attempting to introduce documents from the FBI in order to discredit King. Notably, Senator Helms threatened a filibuster in an attempt to prevent the Senate from voting on the measure and voiced his opposition to the holiday by arguing that King was a Marxist agitator and that a federal holiday ought to commemorate “shared values” of Americans but that King’s "very name itself remains a source of tension, a deeply troubling symbol of divided society.” A number of Senators were outraged by Senator Helm’s comments. When Helms argued that the bill would be too expensive, with Senator Bob Dole (R-KS) exclaiming “since when did a dollar sign take its place atop our moral code?" Famously, Senator Pat Moynihan (D-NY) referred to the FBI documents which Helm’s was attempting to introduce as a “packet of filth.”

Despite the efforts to undermine it, the legislation passed through both houses and was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in November 1983. Martin Luther King Jr. Day would officially begin being celebrated as a federal holiday in 1986. However, the battle for a day to remember King did not end here as it would be almost another twenty years before all states would finally recognize the holiday.

Corretta Scott King looks on as President Reagan signs Martin Luther King Jr. Day into law in the White House’s Rose Garden

Even after President Reagan signed the 1983 bill making MLK Day a federal holiday, several states held out on recognizing the holiday. In fact, it is not required by federal law that states observe any out of the 10 federal holidays. Over the coming decades, this gave states to have free reign over how they chose to celebrate MLK Day allowing them to modify the holiday in an attempt to downplay King’s legacy.

Many Southern states had preexisting holidays to honor Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s birthday on January 19. Seeing as MLK Day was designated to take place on the third Monday of January close to King’s birthday on January 15, these Southern states paradoxically lumped the holidays honoring Robert E. Lee and Martin Luther King Jr. together. Virginia additionally celebrated Confederate General Stonewall Jackson on the same day in a holiday known as “Lee-Jackson-King Day” until 2000 when the celebration of Lee and Jackson was moved to the Friday before MLK Day. Although Arkansas ceased celebrating “King-Lee Day” in March 2017 when the holiday honoring Lee was moved to mid-October, the states of Alabama and Mississippi still insultingly celebrate a Confederate general on the same day that they honor a black civil rights activist. It is no mistake that these states intentionally celebrated these two men as a means of downplaying King’s legacy. In fact, the cause for which Robert E. Lee fought is clearly preserved in Article IV of the Confederate constitution: “the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected.”

Idaho residents rally in support of recognizing MLK Day on January 16, 1989

The effort to subvert the King’s legacy was not limited to just the Southern states however. In fact states like Idaho, Arizona, Utah, and New Hampshire would hold out on recognizing the holiday officially for decades to come. Idaho, a incredibly rural state with a less than 1% black population, established a reputation nationally throughout the 1980s as a home base for white supremacist organizations. Members of the Aryan Nations committed such attacks as the bombing of a Boise synagogue and the 1984 murder of Jewish radio host, Alan Berg. In fact, Idaho’s push to recognize MLK Day came out of desire to deflect the national criticism the state was facing for its festering white supremacist movements. However, even when Idaho finally recognized MLK Day in 1990, it did so under the compromised title of “Martin Luther King Jr.-Idaho Human Rights Day.”

Coretta Scott King addressing the Utah Legislature in 1986 urging them to recognize a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

Other opposition to Martin Luther King Jr. Day came out of the state of Arizona in the early 1990s, demonstrating further that attempts to minimize King’s legacy were and are historically defunct viewpoints. In March 1990, the NFL was planning to host the 1993 Super Bowl in Arizona but only under the condition that the state recognize MLK Day. Despite calls from President Reagan and Arizona Governor Evan Mecham, state voters rejected the proposal in November 1990 by a margin of 17,000 votes. One Phoenix man, Robert O. Rose, who led the campaign against the recognition of MLK day was cited as stating: “We honestly don't believe our kids and grandkids should revere him as a national hero.” It was only in 1992 that the state of Arizona voted to recognize the holiday.

However, despite their efforts to oppose the holiday, neither Idaho nor Arizona were among the last states to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In 1993, New Hampshire had approved the celebration of “Civil Rights Day” instead and it wasn’t until 1999 that the state would eventually recognize MLK Day in name. Similarly, in 2000 Utah voted to recognize MLK Day which had been celebrated as “Human Rights Day” up until then. Both of these states, by refusing to add King’s name to the holiday for years, serve as an example to the attempted erasure of King’s memory from the civil rights movement. It did not even end there however. Up until 2000 -- MLK Day was an optional paid state holiday in South Carolina and employees had to choose between celebrating MLK Day or one of three Confederate holidays instead.

It took until 2000 for all fifty states to officially recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day, some thirty years since King’s assassination and almost twenty years since it became a federal holiday. Yet, efforts to minimize King’s impact and legacy on American racial equality and civil rights still persist to this day. As of 2017, Nueces County in Texas still did not recognize MLK Day by name -- choosing to recognize a “County Civil Rights Holiday” instead. The same year, the city of Biloxi, Mississippi drew criticism for referring to the holiday as “Great Americans Day” instead of MLK Day.

King’s words quoted by Dr. Campbell in his op-ed for The Chicago Tribune engraved in stone at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial — King’s words quoted by Dr. Campbell in his op-ed
for *The Chicago Tribune* engraved in stone at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

But perhaps it is this year that King’s legacy is more important than ever in recent memory, as MLK Day in 2021 comes after a year of protests against racially motivated police violence and less than two weeks after racist mobs attacked the U.S. Capitol Building. In fact, Dr. Jason Campbell, writing for The Chicago Tribune, points out that the importance of King’s words today by quoting Dr. King himself: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

The Decades Long Battle for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

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