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 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 the 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, several Southern
states, including 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, Jefferson Davis. Utah celebrated
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 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
Mississippi officially celebrates
Confederate Heritage Month in April. Other
states recognize the month, but there is no
official celebration, although four states
celebrate Confederate Memorial Day at the
end of April or early May.
Confederates and their descendants
spend lots of time and energy propagating
lies. They persistently believe they won the
Civil War, although an honest history says
otherwise. They continue to chip away at the
civil rights legacy, not just with words and
Confederate holidays, but with the voter
suppression that taints too many of our
elections. The response to the fiction they
continue to spin is our resilience and
persistence in the face of their warped
fantasies.
We must continue to sing the “Black
Birthday Song” joyously because joy is a
form of resistance. But we must sing it in
its historical context. Whether we are
singing for Big Mama or a newborn baby, we
must never sing Stevie Wonder’s “Happy
Birthday” without thinking about speaking
about Dr. King. The song is a tribute to our
resilience and our history. Thank you,
Stevie Wonder, John Conyers, Edward Bush,
Coretta Scott King, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Dr.
Dorothy Height, and many other activists for
persistence in making Dr. King’s birthday a
holiday and for gifting us with the Black
Birthday song, a constant reminder of Dr.
King’s sacrifice and contribution.
