Thread by @DavidKurlander

On Now & Then this week, we encored our July ep on the history of federal holidays, in which @HC_Richardson & @jbf1755 explained the development of July 4th, Election Day, & Columbus Day. In the Time Machine, I looked at the battle over MLK Day:

cafe.com/article/to-tho…

On January 15th, 1969, nine months after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, millions marked what would have been his 40th birthday. In Atlanta, singer @harrybelafonte and Rosa Parks joined King's family and thousands in a solemn parade ( Irving Philips for @afronews)

Coretta Scott King, @OfficialMLK3, Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen Jr., and other King family members also broke ground on the 192-unit low-income MLK Jr. Village housing project (Irving Phillips for @afronews).

Simultaneously in Washington, Michigan Rep. John Conyers and Illinois Senator Edward Brooke led the initial push to declare King’s birthday a federal holiday. By March, Congress received 500,000 letters supporting the initiative (Irving Phillips for @afronews):

On April 1st, 1969, 150 protestors delayed the opening of a Washington D.C. City Council meeting to advocate for the holiday (Stephen Northup for @washingtonpost):

Ralph D. Abernathy, King's successor as @NationalSCLC president, advocated for the holiday in the lead-up to King's next birthday in January 1970. Rev. Douglas Moore of the Black United Front took issue with white involvement in the initiative (@AP, January 9th, 1970):

On April 4th, 1970, exactly two years after King's killing, Congress received 6.5 million signatures in favor of the holiday. Leaders of the petition campaign joined with Conyers & NY Rep. Shirley Chisholm to examine the outpouring of support (@afronews, April 4th, 1970):

Conyers and Brooke introduced bills throughout the 1970s, but to no avail. Democratic Presidential Candidate Sen. George McGovern joined in the fight in 1971 (@thelasentinel, Jan. 7, 1971), and Black servicemen in Vietnam also took up the cause (@afronews, Jan. 23rd, 1971):

Finally, in 1979, the King Holiday Bill seemed poised to pass. A group of Republican congressional holdouts pushed through an amendment setting the holiday on a Sunday to avoid a day off and gave anti-King statements. The effort was scuttled (@MIChronicle, Nov. 1979):

In 1981, @StevieWonder released "Happy Birthday," a song about the importance of the holiday: "“I just never understood / How a man who died for good / Could not have a day that would / Be set aside for his recognition.”

Wonder also organized a massive parade in Washington for January 15th, 1981, on what would have been King's 52nd birthday. He offered a rousing speech, recorded by @whuttv and stored in the @americanarchivepub:

americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aa…

And he sang happy birthday to King with fellow groundbreaking recording artists and activists Johnny Taylor and Gil Scott Heron (@NYAmNews, Jan. 15, 1981)

When the Bill went down in Congress again, @StevieWonder upped his efforts. He wrote a number of opinion pieces, including a January 1982 @Essence essay, and held an even larger parade with @MsGladysKnight and @RevJJackson (Fred Sweets for @washingtonpost, Jan. 15 1982):

He also visited House Speaker Tip O'Neill with Coretta Scott King (@AP, Feb. 24, 1982) as part of a larger push to directly impact congressional opinion (James Atherton for the @washingtonpost, Jan. 7, 1983)

Finally, in October 1983, after fifteen years of widespread activism, the Bill reached a decidedly-not-thrilled President Reagan's desk. Here, Republican and holiday backer Senator Howard Baker celebrates with Coretta Scott King and @OfficialMLK3 (@AP, Oct. 20, 1983):

Check out the full piece for more on the congressional battles over MLK Day (and North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms' crusade against the holiday), and listen to @HC_Richardson and @jbf1755 on the encore of the Now & Then ep on federal holidays here:
cafe.com/now-and-then/e…