,
17 tweets,
4 min read
Read on Twitter
The history of the battle to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday sheds some light on the state of civil rights politics in the 1980s.
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
1973: Illinois becomes the first state to declare MLK Birthday a holiday.
In November 1979, the House votes 252-133 to enact a holiday. Coretta Scott King sits in the galleries one month later when conservatives change the bill to make the “holiday” fall on Sunday and to not include holiday pay. The CBO says no. 
In 1982, Coretta King criticizes the “traveling right-wing circus” attacking her deceased husband. Conservative Georgia Democrat Larry McDonald warns of secret FBI material that would be devastating to King’s reputation.
On Capitol Hill, organizers and elected officials gathered in 1982 and early 1983 to plan how to pass the bill. Congressman John Conyers talks about the need to commemorate the leader. Stevie Wonder says that “We should celebrate the people who died for [King’s] principles.”
President Reagan explains his opposition to a national holiday on January 23. “Where Do We Stop?” he asks. But feeling immense political pressure, Reagan starts to soften in his opposition.
The House passes the bill in July that would make MLK Birthday a holiday. The final vote is 249 to 89. 77 Republicans and 13 Democrats join the opposition.
In August 1983, over 200,000 people march to celebrate the 20th anniversary of King’s March on Washington. “We have come in the name of peace to declare war—war, if you please—on the Reagan administration,” said the NAACP’s Benjamin Hooks.
Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday” is the anthem of the movement.
Coretta Scott King and others present House Speaker Tip O’Neill a petition with over six million signatures in favor of the holiday.
GOP Senator North Carolina Jesse Helms filibusters. Helms attacks King as a “action-oriented Marxist” and warns of FBI files.
New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan calls Senator Helms’s remarks “filth” and “obscenities.”
October 19, 1983: Senate passes the bill 78 to 22.
New Jersey Democrat Bill Bradley criticizes the opponents for “playing up to ‘old Jim Crow’ and all of us know it.”
President Reagan signs the bill into law on November 2, 1983. The holiday would come on the third Monday in January, starting in 1986.
Several southern and western states resist before the nation celebrates the first federal holiday. Virginia initially combines MLK day with Lee-Jackson Day, the holiday that commemorated the Confederate Generals.
