And the famous song that helped bring attention to the campaign.
When Martin Luther King Jr. died in 1968, he was a mere 39 years old — but what he accomplished in those years is more than most people could accomplish in five lifetimes. Each year, we honor his work as a civil rights leader via a federal holiday in January. And while plenty of Americans might not be able to remember a time when they didn’t have this holiday, it actually has a fairly recent (and highly interesting) history.
From a contentious argument on the Senate floor to a pop song that became a political anthem, it’s time we recognize the strange and disturbing history behind this holiday that almost never came to pass.
1968: Rep. John Conyers introduces the idea of a holiday four days after King’s death
On April 8, 1968, a mere four days after King was assassinated, Rep. John Conyers introduced a motion to make King’s birthday a federal holiday.
The motion failed, but that didn’t deter Conyers, who was a proud civil rights activist himself. He would go on to introduce the motion every year, with the full support of the Congressional Black Caucus, for more than a decade before the idea began to really take hold.
Conyers died in 2019 (he was, amazingly, a congressman all the way up until 2017), but he spoke a number of times about why it was so important to him to honor King with a national holiday.
“To me, [King] is the outstanding international leader of the 20th century without ever holding office. What he did — I doubt anyone else could have done,” Conyers told The Washington Post in 2015.
1980: Stevie Wonder pens a famous song in support of the campaign for MLK Day
By 1980, despite the full-throated effort from politicians like Conyers, there still wasn’t enough support for the measure to gain momentum on Capitol Hill. That’s where one internationally famous musician comes in.
In the summer of 1980, Stevie Wonder released his new album, Hotter Than July, which included a song you might know by heart. It’s called Happy Birthday, and it’s just about one of the most famous songs on the planet.
Even if you’ve heard the song, though, you probably didn’t know that it was written as an homage to King, and as a direct effort to celebrate King’s birthday and increase public support to make it a federal holiday. The lyrics read in part:
You know it doesn’t make much sense
There ought to be a law against
Anyone who takes offense
At a day in your celebration ’cause we all know in our minds
That there ought to be a time
That we can set aside
To show just how much we love you
And I’m sure you would agree
What could fit more perfectly
Than to have a world party on the day you came to be
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
The song was, as you might have guessed, a smash hit. And while it didn’t yield immediate success, it’s impossible to measure the cultural impact it had on the conversation.
Years later, Wonder spoke to Rolling Stone about his decision to write a politically-motivated song on behalf of King’s legacy. “I had a vision of the Martin Luther King birthday as a national holiday,” he said. “I mean, I saw that. I imagined it. I wrote about it because I imagined it and I saw it and I believed it. So I just kept that in my mind till it happened.”
1983: A bitter debate breaks out on the Senate floor over the national holiday
If you’ve been keeping an eye on politics over the last several years, then the idea of bitter partisan battles probably doesn’t make you blink — but you just might be surprised to hear how viciously a contingency of senators fought the idea of MLK Day up until the bitter end.
By 1983, thanks to the work of politicians like Conyers and activist celebrities like Wonder, public support for MLK Day had picked up momentum — and the support had become enormous. In fact, Conyers had worked alongside King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, to amass a petition for the holiday with over six million votes in favor of the motion. (When you consider that this happened before petitions could be easily signed online, that number starts to seem almost unimaginably high.)
This time, the motion passed easily in the House, 338-90. But when the motion reached the Senate, a bitter fight broke out among the politicians. In fact, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina actually went so far as to submit documents arguing that King had been tied to the communist party. Another senator tried to filibuster the bill, as well.
Ultimately, though, after two full days of debate, there was enough support in the Senate to pass the bill 78-22 and get it onto then-President Ronald Reagan’s desk. After almost two decades of campaigning, MLK Day became a federal holiday — but the battle wasn’t over quite yet.
After all, it’s one thing for the federal government to pass a bill — it’s another thing entirely for all 50 states to respect it.
1986-2000: Several states continue resistance to national holiday
In the years following the passage of the bill, dozens of states refused to recognize MLK Day as a federal holiday, and therefore refused to guarantee paid time off for employees. By 1986, only 17 states had confirmed recognition of the day.
In 1990, the battle over recognition of the federal holiday came to a head when the holiday was put up for a voter referendum in Arizona. The debate over the holiday was so contentious that the NFL threatened to move the 1993 Super Bowl, scheduled to take place in Tempe, to another state if MLK Day didn’t become a recognized holiday in Arizona.
The voters of Arizona called the NFL’s bluff and voted down the bill in a two-part referendum. In response, the NFL made good on its promise and moved the Super Bowl from Tempe to Southern California. This was a massive financial loss for the state of Arizona, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
This seemed to move the needle for voters two years later, as they voted in favor of MLK Day this time, making it a recognized holiday in 1992.
Still, MLK Day was far from consistently acknowledged, even in the states that did honor the day as a paid holiday for employees. For example, some states called the day “Civil Rights Day” instead of “Martin Luther King Jr. Day,” and two states in particular (Alabama and Mississippi) actually went as far as recognizing Confederate general Robert E. Lee alongside King in a “combined” holiday for a number of years.
2000: South Carolina is the last state to approve the day as a paid holiday for employees
By 2000, two decades after MLK Day was passed into law, South Carolina was the last state to approve the day as a fully recognized holiday for all employees. The governor of South Carolina tried to lump passage of the holiday into a motion that would also allow the state house to fly the Confederate flag, but that didn’t happen.
Instead, there was a bittersweet resolution: The governor signed recognition of MLK Day into law, along with recognition of another state holiday called Confederate Memorial Day, which would take place in May. And yes, if you’re wondering, South Carolina still celebrates both holidays every single year. This feels like a perfect metaphor for the complicated relationship that so many Americans have with our nation’s history of civil rights and racism itself.
