Today is MLK Day, a federal holiday observing the birthday of the foremost spokesperson for nonviolent activism in the American civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Although Dr. King, a registered Republican, was born on January 15, the holiday is always observed on the third Monday in January as part of The Uniform Monday Holiday Act.
The federal holiday wasn’t an easy one to get passed in Congress. It was initially introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan) on April 8, 1968, just four days after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. It was designed to make King’s actual birthday a holiday; however, it did not pass and Conyers would persist every year introducing the same bill for more than a decade.
On the other side of the isle, Senator Edward Brooke (R-Massachusetts), also introduced legislation in 1968 authorizing the President to issue a proclamation each year designating January 15 as “Martin Luther King Day,” and called on the people to commemorate Dr. King’s life and the service to his country and its citizens through appropriate honors, ceremonies, and prayers.
By 1971, petitions in support of the King Holiday had exceeded three million, but the bills in Congress could still get no traction.
Between the period of 1973 and 1978, Conyers and Brooke produced 45 bills that would never pass Congress. At one point, Conyers was able to garner ninety-nine co-sponsors (approximately 22.7% of the House) and Brooke was able to garner fifty-seven co-sponsors (57% of the Senate). Regardless, it would still not pass.
It wasn’t until 1979 that the bill would have a real chance of passing Congress. The United States Postal Service unveiled a 15 cent commemorative stamp as a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. providing considerable awareness and notoriety. Conyers and Senator Birch Bayh (D-Indiana) submitted identical bills, H.R. 15 and S. 25. Conyers was able to garner 118 supporters of the bill in the House and Bayh collected thirty-seven. Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s widow, testified in front of joint hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Post Office and Civil Service Subcommittee on Census and Population.
The major objections at the time had nothing to do with race, they were:
- The establishment of a public holiday to honor a private citizen would be contrary to our country’s longstanding tradition.
- The country already observed no fewer than nine legal public holidays — New Years Day, “Presidents Day” as it is officially known or “Washington’s Birthday” as an unreconstructed American public continues to insisting on calling it, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
- A paid holiday for all federal employees was too expensive and would cost taxpayers, at that time, $212 million in a single day (a time when the deficit was only $900 billion). Today, it costs $500 million to send federal workers home on that day.
- Accusations that Dr. King was a communist.
- The procedural tactic used by Democrats to push the bill through Congress was unethical and improper as it did not allow for proper debate and amendments of the bill. In fact, it provided only forty minutes of debate, typically reserved for non-controversial bills.
The alternative was to substitute a “National Day of Recognition” in lieu of a legal holiday to honor Dr. King. Had such a law been enacted, the government would have saved over $11 billion in taxpayer money to date. The issue was not whether or not to provide Dr. King some acknowledgment; it was whether it would be a federal holiday or a day of recognition.
Democrats in Congress refused to hear any substitutions and cried racism by Republicans, neglecting to point out that President Jimmy Carter failed to help round up the necessary votes after promising to assist with a King Holiday if Democrats in Big Labor would support his 1976 Presidential campaign. They did and he did not, yet they did not accuse him of racism.
After Conyers failed to get the necessary votes in Congress to pass the legislation (he was short by five votes), there was an agreement by both parties to table the legislation.
In 1981, Republican Ronald Reagan took the oath and became the 40th President of the United States. Republicans also took a majority in the Senate for the first time since 1953. Between 1981 and 1982, four King Holiday bills were introduced. Conyers on the House side and Sen. Charles “Mac” Mathias, Jr. (R-Maryland) on the Senate side. The Reagan administration signaled that the president would not veto it if it came before him. This set the tone for what was about to happen next.
In 1983, it was the 15th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death and six million signatures were collected for a petition to Congress to pass the law, the largest petition in favor of an issue in U.S. history. Conyers and Mathias both submitted bills again, but this time it was Representative Katie Hall (D-Indiana), who had been elected to Congress for barely six months, that introduced legislation that would become law. The King Holiday bill (H.R. 3345) had sixty co-sponsors.
The debates on both sides of the isle were spirited to say the least.
While Congress had a much easier time getting the bill passed, it still had its dissenters. One was Larry McDonald (D-Georgia) who opposed the establishment of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, stating the FBI had evidence that King “was associated with and being manipulated by communists and secret communist agents.”
On the Senate side a filibuster was attempted by Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) as he charged King with “action-oriented Marxism” and other radical political views; however, Senator Strom Thurmond (R-South Carolina), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, filed a cloture petition to shut off debate and bring the bill to a vote.
Other prominent Republicans in Congress speaking in favor of the bill included Republican Conference Chairman Jack Kemp (R-New York), Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia), Dan Lungren (R-California), and Bob Dole (R-Kansas).
The House of Representatives passed the bill on August 2, 1983 by a vote of 338-90 with overwhelming bipartisan support. On October 19, 1983, the bill passed the Senate by a vote of 78-22 (37 Republicans and 41 Democrats voted for the bill). And on November 3, 1983, President Reagan signed the bill into law where Coretta Scott King observed the signing at the White House.
MLK Day was first observed on January 20, 1986. In 1989, Republican President George H. W. Bush made Coretta Scott King a member of the Federal Holiday Commission to oversee observance of MLK Day for life. By 2000, the holiday was officially observed in all 50 states.
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