Push for MLK holiday intensifiesīy the time Wonder began to pen the lyrics to his infectious tune, things looked bleak. The next year, it passed through the statehouse unanimously and so-called “Lee-King” Day was signed into law. George Wallace announced support of the latter bill. Lee’s, which was already observed on the third Monday of January. Holmes, who served from 1974 to 2018, would advance two alternative bills in April and October 1983: the first would combine the state’s three Confederate holidays and mark it in June on Jefferson Davis’ birthday the second would combine King’s birthday with Robert E. Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, addresses marchers during his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Scott King, with an assist from civil rights attorney and then Alabama legislator Fred Gray found no better luck that year when they appealed to the state. In 1973, when the late Alvin Holmes, not yet an Alabama representative, asked Montgomery county commissioners to declare Jan. The Alabama Journal newspaper reported in July 1972 that “demands for Black history, Afro clubs and a Martin Luther King Memorial Day observance led to notable student walkouts” in Montgomery public schools the year prior. The president endorsed the bill, but not even a plea from the sanctuary of King’s former Atlanta church Ebenezer Baptist moved the congressional needle. When Jimmy Carter won the 1976 presidential election, King supporters had hoped he would be swayed to act by his debt to the unions, which had played a major role in his victory. By the early 70s, the United Autoworkers and AFSCME, two of the country’s largest unions, had made the King holiday a regular demand in contract negotiations. and UAW president Walter Reuther in Detroit, June 1966.Īt a New York General Motors plant, a small group of auto workers refused to labor on King’s birthday one year after his death, and thousands of hospital workers launched a strike until managers agreed to make it a paid holiday. When King was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, he was there to back striking sanitation workers who were pushing for higher wages among other work reforms.
The leader had been a strong labor union supporter and set the demand for fair wages and “full employment” as a centerpiece of his activism. Yet by 1981 only 13 states had recognized it - to some degree.Īs early as 1969, Black and brown union workers had begun to agitate in favor of the King holiday. By 1973, King’s hometown of Atlanta had designated the day as a legal holiday. 15 birthday a holiday (they claim they were the first government body in the U.S. On the day of King’s funeral, one south New Jersey town’s school board swiftly passed a resolution declaring his Jan.
Instantaneously, both official and unofficial memorials and commemorations cropped up in cities and towns across the country. Shirley Chisholm resubmitted the proposal each subsequent congressional session until it gained the votes needed to pass. submitted a bill to make King’s birthday a national holiday but the measure failed to gain popular support. stands with other civil rights leaders on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., on April 3, 1968, a day before he was assassinated at approximately the same place.įour days after an assassin’s bullet struck the peace activist on April 4, 1968, Michigan Congressman John Conyers Jr. Not long before his 18th birthday, his hero was dead. At 16, he would meet King at a Chicago Freedom Movement rally. Wonder first recalled hearing the young Black minister speak on the radio when he was 5 years old and news of a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, traveled to Detroit. King’s life and death left an indelible mark on him. Wonder and his 1980 single would play an outsize role in the creation of Martin Luther King Day the first national holiday honoring a Black American, celebrated on the third Monday of January each year. “I said, ‘Well, no, I really believe it will',” Wonder added. “We’re in a time where I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Wonder recounted. The song in question was Wonder’s 1980 release “Happy Birthday,” now lovingly known to African Americans as the Black version of the traditional song. CNN's Anderson Cooper interviews Stevie Wonder in 2011 about the Motown star's years-long push for a M.L.
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