MLK holiday: Branches work to make it work, The

On November 3, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed the Martin Luther King Jr. National Holiday bill, designating it the third Monday in January, which roughly coincides with King's birthday. Many NAACPers thought it signified "a done deal." Our only fight, we thought then, would be to keep this from becoming another day of "King-size" sales.

As we stepped to the rhythms of Stevie Wonder's 1980 King anthem, "Happy Birthday," a bolt of pre-holiday racism jolted us. Insanity runs in our national family. What else can account for Virginia's decision to celebrate the King federal holiday as "Lee-Jackson-King Day"? Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, two Confederate generals, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.talk about strange bedfellows! But, is that insanity any worse than Utah calling the holiday in King's honor by another name-"Human Rights Day"?

Because of this national psychosis, more than 15 years elapsed between the time Rep. John Conyers (D. Mich.) introduced the King holiday bill-four days after King's April 4, 1968, assassinationand the 1983 signing. Even though the Southern Christian Leadership Conference gathered three million signatures in 1971 petitioning for a King holiday, Congress took no action.

Three states went it alone and approved a King holiday: Illinois in 1973, Massachusetts in 1974, and New Jersey in 1975. The federal government didn't make a move until 1979, after the King Center launched a national campaign. The U.S. House of Representatives responded by defeating the King holiday billtwice-in 1979 and in 1980. Not even Stevie Wonder's music could soothe the savage congressional naysayers.

When states did come on board, NAACP branches faced (and continue to face) the irony of states celebrating the holiday while many of their municipalities do not. The East Valley (Mesa, Ariz.) Branch of the NAACP reports that Mesa doesn't honor the holiday. This is true, too, of Allentown, N.Y., according to the Allentown Branch of the NAACP.

Our efforts to make the MLK holiday a truly national one had been stymied so long it seemed the floodgates of success opened in April when Utah, Virginia, and Connecticut passed laws further solidifying the King Holiday. Edward L. Lewis Jr., president of the Tri-State Conference of NAACP Branches; Dwight James, executive director of the conference; and Jeanetta Williams, president of the Salt Lake City Branch, were successful in their long struggle to get Utah to change the name of the King holiday from Human Rights Day.

Salt Lake Branch President Jeanetta Williams launched efforts to sponsor a bill changing Utah's Human Rights Day to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The branch and the state conference began by getting state Sen. Pete Suazo to sponsor and shepherd the bill through the Senate. It won there by a vote of 28-1. However, the bill died in the house committee.

With the urging of the NAACP, Rep. Duane Bourdeaux resurrected it. Still, a broad band of support was needed. The Salt Lake Branch in conjunction with Edward L. Lewis Jr., NAACP Tri-State conference president, enlisted and received help from a broad band of supporters: the League of Women Voters, churches and various ethnic and civic groups. With the support of these groups and with letters of support enlisted from NAACP President/CEO Kweisi Mfume, NAACP Chairman of the Board Julian Bond, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson and mayors from other municipalities, the bill passed in the house 54-17.

In March, Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt signed the bill naming the third Monday of January after Martin Luther King Jr., and celebrated with a ceremony on April 5. With the signing, Utah became the last state to recognize the King holiday by name, according to the Salt Lake City Tribune. (The state had celebrated Human Rights Day since 1986 when the federal government began the King holiday.)

Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III finessed the problem of a Lee-JacksonKing Day by creating two holidays-one for its native-son generals and another for King. Gov. Gilmore signed a bill on April 4 that kept Martin Luther King Day on the third Monday of January, the federal holiday, and moved Lee-Jackson Day to the preceding Friday. This gives state employees a paid four-day weekend.

King Salim Khalfani, executive director of the Virginia State Conference, told The Crisis the downside of the new arrangement is that taxpayers will now finance the Confederate holiday.

"Now Mr. Lee and Mr. Jackson have a paid holiday," Khalfani said. "While it was a holiday before, it wasn't a paid holiday. Under the guise of separating King from Lee and Jackson, they have given full recognition to the Confederacy-with pay."

This level of guile was missing from Connecticut's new law requiring cities to observe the King holiday. The New York Times noted that Gov. John G. Rowland's signing of the bill last April 26 with no advance notice "seemed intended to deflate the weight of Mr. [Jesse] Jackson's arrival" at the capitol. Jackson was scheduled to speak on behalf of the bill. Roger Vann, president of the Connecticut State Conference of the NAACP, said "just the news that he [Jackson] was going to be here speeded up the process."

Vann reported in The Crisis last July that Wallingford, Conn., was "the only municipality in the state not observing Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday for city employees. Wallingford has a population of 41,000, 1 percent of whom are African American."

Although the new law applies to all of Connecticut's 169 towns and cities, it was written and approved specifically because of Wallingford, the only city that refused to make King day a paid holiday.

It has taken 32 years since Rep. Conyers first introduced his bill to get all the states to celebrate a King holiday in his name. The hard work of the NAACP and others, especially the King Center, achieved it. That we have done so deserves praise. That it has taken so long reminds us that insanity really does run in the American family.

Phil W Petrie is an editorial consultant and freelance writer who lives in Clarksville, Tenn.

Copyright Crisis Publishing Company, Incorporated May/Jun 2000
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