Proposals and
Coretta Scott King at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day signing ceremony The initial idea of Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday was promoted by
labor unions in contract negotiations. After King's death, Representative
John Conyers (a Democrat from
Michigan) and Senator
Edward Brooke (a Republican from
Massachusetts) introduced a bill in Congress to make King's birthday a national/official holiday in 1968. The bill first came to a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1979, the House held a vote to amend the bill so that the holiday would be the third Sunday in January, rather than the Monday. Two of the main arguments mentioned by opponents were that a paid holiday for federal employees would be too expensive and that a holiday to honor a private citizen would be contrary to longstanding tradition (King had never held public office). Helms led a
filibuster against the bill and on October 3, 1983, submitted a 300-page document to the Senate alleging that King had associations with
communists. Democratic New York Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan declared Helms' document a "packet of filth", threw it on the Senate floor, and stomped on it.
Federal passage President
Ronald Reagan initially opposed the establishment of the holiday, stating in a letter to former New Hampshire governor
Meldrim Thomson that he believed the momentum for establishing it to be "based on an image, not reality." When asked to comment on Helms' accusations that King was a communist, the president said "We'll know in thirty-five years, won't we", referring to the eventual release of
FBI surveillance tapes that had previously been
sealed. But on November 2, 1983, Reagan signed a bill into law, proposed by Representative
Katie Hall of Indiana, to create a federal holiday honoring King. The final vote in the
House of Representatives on August 2, 1983, was 338–90 (242–4 in the
House Democratic Caucus and 89–77 in the
House Republican Conference) with 5 members voting present or abstaining, both
veto-proof margins. The holiday was observed for the first time on January 20, 1986. The bill also established the "Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday Commission"
State passage Although the federal holiday honoring King was signed into law in 1983 and took effect three years later, not every U.S. state chose to observe the January holiday at the state level In 1999,
New Hampshire became the last state to name a holiday after King, which they first celebrated in January 2000the first nationwide celebration of the day with this name. In 1986, Arizona
Governor Bruce Babbitt, a Democrat, created a paid state MLK holiday in Arizona by executive order just before he left office, but in 1987, his Republican successor
Evan Mecham, citing an attorney general's opinion that Babbitt's order was illegal, reversed Babbitt's decision days after taking office. Later that year, Mecham proclaimed the third Sunday in January to be "Martin Luther King Jr./Civil Rights Day" in Arizona, albeit as an unpaid holiday. This proposal was rejected by the state Senate the following year. In 1990, Arizona voters were given the opportunity to vote on giving state employees a paid MLK holiday. That same year, the
National Football League threatened to move
Super Bowl XXVII, which was planned for Arizona in 1993, if the MLK holiday was voted down. In the November 1990 election, the voters were offered two King Day options: Proposition 301, which replaced
Columbus Day on the list of paid state holidays, and Proposition 302, which merged
Lincoln's and
Washington's birthdays into one paid holiday to make room for MLK Day. Both measures failed to pass, with only 49% of voters approving Prop 302, the more popular of the two options; although some who voted "no" on 302 voted "yes" on Prop 301. Consequently, the state lost the chance to host Super Bowl XXVII, which was subsequently held at the
Rose Bowl in
Pasadena, California. On May 2, 2000, South Carolina governor
Jim Hodges signed a bill to make King's birthday an official state holiday. South Carolina was the last state to recognize the day as a paid holiday for all state employees. Before the bill, employees could choose between celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day or one of three
Confederate holidays. == Presidential tradition ==