By Julianne Malveaux (TriceEdneyWire.com) Just four days after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, the inveterate warrior, Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D-MI), introduced legislation to make his birthday a federal holiday. It took fifteen years, hundreds of protests, a song, and a tour to make Dr. King's birthday a holiday, and Stevie Wonder's lyrics, first debuted in his 1980 Hotter Than July, songs encouraged activists to keep pushing for the holiday after being repeatedly rebuffed. The Conyers legislation passed the House of Representatives 338-90 with much opposition from conservative white Southerners (primarily Republicans), speciously claiming that the holiday cost too much money. On the Senate side, the legislation, sponsored by Senator Ed Brooke (R-MA), passed 78-22. The process was far from smooth, though. Then North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) passed out binders full of scurrilous lies about Dr. King, describing him as a communist and worse. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was so outraged that he described the information as filth and physically stomped on it. Still, then-President Ronald Reagan signed the legislation in 1983. It has been 40 years since the bill was passed, and we ought to celebrate. This legislation was only passed because of Black people's resilience and persistence. These might be metaphoric for the struggle we must continue to wage. One of the ways we continue to struggle is to ensure that everyone who sings the Black Birthday song realizes that the song is a tribute to Dr. King and was part of the struggle that was waged to make his birthday a national holiday. Many states refused to embrace the national King holiday. Indeed, it was not until 2000, 17 years after the federal legislation passed, that all 50 states had some form of a King holiday. Arizona was the last, and they paid for their resistance. The National Football League moved the 1995 Super Bowl from Phoenix to Los Angeles when Arizona refused to recognize the holiday. Several, including Rev. Jesse Jackson, boycotted the state and canceled events scheduled there. Even today, Alabama and Mississippi attempt to weaken the meaning of the King holiday by naming it the King-Lee holiday, forcing those who celebrate the King holiday to also implicitly recognize the Confederate traitor, Robert E. Lee. Utah described January 15 as Human Rights Day rather than Dr. King's birthday. It was not until 2000 that Utah became one of the last states to make Dr. King’s birthday a state holiday. Why the resistance? Ignorance, arrogance, Caucasity, and racial hatred. And before anyone suggest that Caucasity isn’t a word that appears in Webster’s dictionary, you don’t need a dictionary to know that Caucasity is the racist behavior of some Caucasians. In addition to attempting to chip away at the King's legacy with their resistance to racial justice, Virginia had the audacity to couple the King birthday with those of Jefferson Davis AND Stonewall Jackson, another Confederate traitor. And Mississ
