On January 15, 2014, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been 85 years old, as he was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929. To observe his birthday as the tenth national holiday of the United States, Republican President Ronald Reagan, on November 2, 1983 at a White House Rose Garden ceremony signed into law a bill proposed by Indiana Representative Katie Hall. There was a preceding history to the 1983 creation of the first federal holiday to honor a black person in American history. For, then North Carolina Republican Senators Jesse Helms and John Porter East led opposition to the bill and, as well, questioned whether the Georgia-born King, the grandson of former slaves, was ‘important enough’ to be given such an honour. Helms openly criticized Dr. King for various reasons, including the Baptist Minister’s Pacifist and non-violent leanings, which prompted him to oppose the Vietnam War. Helm’s 300-page anti-King holiday document submitted to the U.S. Senate on October 3, 1983, which specifically alleged that King had ‘associations with communist’, was described by then Senior Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan as being ‘a packet of filth’, whereby the New York Senior Senator threw the document on the Senate floor and stomped on it.

Among leading Republican Senators also opposing the 1983 King holiday bill was Arizona senator John McCain, who further defended Republican Governor Evan Mecham of Arizona for opposing the holiday from becoming a paid holiday in Arizona. After President Reagan supported the holiday and signed its bill into law, Senator McCain then supported Democratic Governor Bruce Babbit’s earlier move to make the King holiday an Arizona State holiday; even at that, Arizona merely replaced Columbus Day with the King holiday in 1989, almost six years after President Reagan signed the measure into law in 1983. That, indeed, was why McCain was criticized by black leaders in the 208 presidential campaign for his earlier opposition to the King holiday efforts.

New Hampshire Republican leaders, too, dragged their feet about the King holiday being observed in their State. Instead, they reluctantly created a legislative ‘Civil Rights Day’ in 1991 to replace a so-called ‘Fast Day’. Subsequently, New Hampshire beca,e the last American state to have the King holiday observed as a holiday when the holiday was allowed to replace the ‘Civil Rights Day’. Utah, for example, allowed the holiday, but it called it ‘Human Rights day’ until 2000, when the Utah State Legislature voted to change the name of the holiday from human Rights Day to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and Utah Governor Michael O. Leavitt signed it into State law.

The State of Virginia, when led by republican governors, had its own 9interesting scenario, as the holiday was known as Lee-Jackson-King Day, which did combine Dr. king’s January birthday with the existing Lee-Jackson Day, thus celebrating simultaneously a holiday honoring the lives of Confederate Army General Lee with that of Dr. King. To make room for a separate birthday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Virginia, the Lee-Jackson Day was moved to a Friday before the actual King Day in America, thereby being able to have the third Monday in January as a King Day like all other places in the United States.

Still stubborn about the King holiday is the State of Mississippi, which continues to share Dr. King’s birthday, as a holiday on the third Monday of January each year, with the birthday of Robert E. Lee’s January 19th birthday. In Alabama, where the late Governor George Wallace ran on a racist platform to become the governor, he declared in his January 1963 inaugural address, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Subsequently, he proceeded, on June 11, 1963 to stand in the doorway at University of Alabama to keep two black students from enrolling there as new students. It is, therefore, not surprising that in Alabama, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. share a paid state holiday on the third Monday in January of each year with General Robert E. Lee.

KING DAY OF NATIONAL SERVICE

At least, no State of the United States of America refuses to honor the national federal holiday that President Reagan, in 1983, created to honor Dr. King’s birthday. In fact, former Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Harris Wofford and Atlanta U.S. Representative John Lewis teamed up to sponsor the King Holiday and Service Act, a federal legislation that challenges American citizens to help in transforming the king Holiday into a national day for Americans to volunteer their services in observance of the King Holiday. On August 23, 1994, then President Bill Clinton signed the federal measure into law.

Each year, the measure makes the King Holiday to be observed as a ‘Day on, not a day off’. Toward that end, former Senator Wofford’s State of Pennsylvania has, annually, observed the most massive national event in Philadelphia as a king day of Service. As Americans take pride in honoring Dr. King this way, other nations follow suit, hence the Japanese city of Hiroshima, which was one of the devastated Japanese cities in a retaliatory American nuclear bombing, is known to have regular observance, in a big way, the January King Day. The city’s mayor, each year, observes the occasion with a city-wide banquet as part of the measures to bring unity and peace to the city.

Very importantly, since his election as the first black elected president of the United States, President Barack Obama honors the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service by going out of the White House to participate in serving lunch in the dining room of a soup kitchen in Washington, D.C. known as ‘So Others Might Eat’. On the same occasion, other national and local political leaders participate in similar voluntary services throughout the United States to make the observance the birthday of Dr. King, as the Crusader without violence, very meaningful.

* A.B. Assensoh, professor emeritus of Indiana University, USA, is courtesy professor and Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh, a lawyer by traiing, is political science professor and vice-president of equity and inclusion at University of Oregon in Eugene, USA.