On Jan. 16, we had the opportunity to honor the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., one of the greatest leaders and humanitarians of our time. This year marked 42 years since King’s Jan. 15 birthday was first recognized as a day of commemoration by Oregon in 1981. His birthday is now celebrated internationally in more than 100 other nations and has been designated as a
National Day of Service in this country since 1994.
It took 15 years of persistence and collective action for the King Holiday Bill (House Resolution 3706) to be approved by the U.S. Senate in 1983. Indeed, legislation to recognize King’s birthday as a federal holiday was first introduced in Congress just four days after King was fatally shot on a Memphis, Tennessee, hotel balcony on April 4, 1968. Year after year,
Rep. John Conyers introduced the bill providing for the holiday in every session of Congress from 1968 to 1983. Rep. Katie B. Hall, who served as chairperson of the Subcommittee on Census and Population, led efforts on the House floor to secure its passage as she asserted the bill would
affirm America’s commitment to King’s mission of civil rights.
King’s wife,
Coretta Scott King, testified before Hall’s subcommittee several times and kept the bill in the public eye through wide-reaching efforts, such as directing the
King Center in a nationwide educational and lobbying campaign to push for the holiday. Musician
Stevie Wonder helped to fund the campaign and
further generated support through his concerts and rallies on the Washington Mall. In 1980, he also released an album with a song that urged the creation of a holiday in King’s honor, aptly titled “Happy Birthday,” which quickly became a rallying song for the holiday. By 1983, support was so overwhelming that the bill passed in the House with a vote of 338 to 90. Then, the bill moved to the Senate, where it took two days of “acrimonious debate” before it was approved with a vote of 78 to 22 and was later signed by President Ronald Reagan on Nov. 2, 1983.
King’s daughter,
Yolanda, visited Oregon for the first time to address the Oregon House on Jan. 16, 1990 (the speech is available
online through OreLegislativeMedia). She opened with the
words of poet Carl Wendell Hines Jr. and reflected on the passage of the King Holiday Bill before concluding with a rendition of Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise.” The poem ends as follows (Yolanda King’s changes from the original are shown in bold):
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear,
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that our ancestors gave,
I am the dream,
you, each, and every one of you are the dream.
We are the dream and the hope of the brave.
I rise
You rise
Together we will rise
Statewide observance of the holiday has varied through the years. Before 1983,
18 states had passed legislation to honor King. Oregon made it a paid holiday in 1985. By 2000, 48 states celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Today, only Mississippi and Alabama continue to celebrate a combined
King-Lee day.
To learn more about the ways King’s work and vision of radical nonviolence are being carried into the 21st century, check out the
King Center, Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, and the
Drum Major Institute. To learn more about the history of the civil rights movement in Oregon, check out Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “Local Color” documentary (1999).
Because it should never be
Just because some cannot see
The dream as clear as he
That they should make it become an illusion
And we all know everything
That he stood for time will bring
For in peace, our hearts will sing
Thanks to Martin Luther King
– Lyrics from “Happy Birthday” by Stevie Wonder