He Had a Dream

I've compiled some interesting Martin Luther King, Jr. Day trivia for y’all…

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

The holiday was not officially observed in all fifty states until 2000, even though it was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.

It’s one of four US holidays commemorating an individual (the others being Presidents Day, Columbus Day, and Christmas).

Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday” was released as a single in 1980 to promote the campaign of national observance, and Wonder went on to host the Rally for Peace press conference the following year.

A 2006 article in The Nation reported that the six million signatures collected in the petition for Congress made it “the largest petition in favor of an issue in U.S. history.”

Photo: Emily Zoladz/The Grand Rapids Press

Some noted politicos who rallied against the bill included Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) who led the opposition, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) who voted against the bill, and President Ronald Regan, who threatened to veto the bill, but changed his mind once he realized there had been a huge veto-proof majority in Congressional voting, and there wasn’t much he could do.The decision not to observe the holiday in Arizona through the early ‘90s prompted two major events in popular culture: in 1990, the NFL moved Superbowl XXVII from Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe to Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena; and in 1991, Public Enemy (yes people, there was a time when VH-1 celebrity surrealist Flavor Flav was relevant) released their song “By the Time I Get to Arizona” laying-out how they would assassinate then Governor Fife Symington, III.

The holiday is observed with much pomp and circumstance in Hiroshima, Japan.

Since 1996 of all of the events honoring the late Dr. King, the largest has been the annual Greater Philadelphia King Day of Service.

Until 2000, Virginia merged MLK Day with the pre-existing Lee-Jackson Day as Lee-Jackson-King Day, celebrating the lives of the two generals of the Confederacy (Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson) alongside that of the civil rights leader who espoused non-violent protest.  Thankfully the irony wasn’t lost on the good people of Virginia for too long, and now Virginians get a four-day weekend in January as Lee-Jackson Day is celebrated on the Friday before MLK Day.

The birthdays of MLK and Robert E. Lee are still comingled, in Mississippi, where I guess irony is completely lost.