Reagan signs the King holiday bill, fifteen years after the first one was introduced
The campaign for a national holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. began soon after his assassination in 1968, and it took fifteen years to reach a President's desk. On November 2, 1983, Ronald Reagan signed into law the bill that Representative Katie Hall of Indiana had proposed. The holiday would fall on the third Monday of each January. Reagan had dismissed the push behind it as "an image, not reality."
King joined Washington and Columbus as people with a national holiday in their honor. Reagan had doubted the movement for the holiday, and he signed it into law after a petition drive that gathered six million signatures.
QWhy did Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan throw a 300-page Senate document on the floor and stomp on it?
On October 3, 1983, Jesse Helms submitted a 300-page document to the Senate alleging that King had associations with communists. Moynihan, a New York Democrat, called it a "packet of filth," threw it on the Senate floor, and stomped on it. Helms had also led a filibuster against the bill and accused King of espousing "action-oriented Marxism." Reagan was asked about the communism accusation and answered, "We'll know in thirty-five years, won't we." He was referring to the release of FBI surveillance tapes that were then sealed. The Senate passed the bill sixteen days after the document was filed.
QHow did the National Football League end up costing Arizona a Super Bowl over the King holiday?
Arizona's governor Bruce Babbitt created a paid state King holiday by executive order in 1986, just before leaving office. His Republican successor, Evan Mecham, reversed it days after taking office in 1987, citing an attorney general's opinion that the order was illegal. In 1990 voters faced two ballot options. Proposition 301 would replace Columbus Day, and Proposition 302 would merge Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays. The NFL had threatened to move Super Bowl XXVII, planned for Arizona in 1993, if the holiday was voted down. Prop 302, the more popular option, drew only 49 percent, and both measures failed. The game went to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Arizona voters approved a single-option holiday in 1992.
QWhat choice did South Carolina state employees have on King's birthday until the year 2000?
South Carolina was the last state to recognize King's birthday as a paid holiday for all state employees. Before Governor Jim Hodges signed the bill in May 2000, employees could choose between the King holiday and one of three Confederate holidays. Other states paired the day with Confederate figures as well. Mississippi used "Martin Luther King's and Robert E. Lee's Birthdays," and Arkansas used a Lee-linked name from 1985 to 2017. In Wyoming, legislator Liz Byrd, the first black woman in the state legislature, introduced a bill in 1991 and accepted the name "Wyoming Equality Day" alongside King's because her colleagues would not pass it otherwise.
