By Fred Williams

In 1979 when I was a legislative aide to Senator Birch Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana, I had the extreme privilege of playing a role in the passage of the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday legislation.

It all started when Senator Ted Kennedy, Democrat from Massachusetts, asked Bayh to attend a meeting in his office. I went with him, and when we arrived at the Senator’s office, Mrs. Coretta Scott King and Congressman John Conyers were there. Mrs. King asked the Senators to conduct a hearing on legislation to create the holiday. Conyers had attempted to hold hearings in the House of Representatives, but because of the strong southern opposition to such a holiday, he was never able to get any movement. Mrs. King and Congressman Conyers felt that holding hearings in the Senate would open up discussion, both pro and con, to a new holiday named after Dr. King.

As chairman of the Judiciary Committee and with Bayh being the ranking member, the two agreed to introduce the Bayh Bill, which was identical to the Conyers measure on the House side, and to hold two days of hearings. One of the most important functions of a staffer is to write floor statements for their bosses. The tone of the statement would also dictate the tone of the hearing. Kennedy and Bayh’s statements needed to reflect exactly why Dr. King deserved a national holiday in his name. That was a critical strategic consideration, and we knew that the statement had to reflect the universal nature of King’s work. It could not be limited to civil rights but had to encompass human rights. The message with the best expression on universal love was that portion of Dr. King’s 1963 delivery at the Lincoln Monument, “I Have a Dream,” where he articulated a world where color is no longer a factor but instead God’s love rules. No one could find fault with the message in those words. I also included in Bayh’s opening statement Dr. King’s famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” where he writes about the importance of justice over laws. 

As we prepared for the hearings, we knew the first obstacle we would confront was the tremendous amount of opposition from the southern senators, both on the Judiciary Committee and with the full body of the Senate. We were not disappointed. After the Senators who supported the legislation testified, they were followed by Senator Strom Thurmond, a Republican from South Carolina, and Senator Jesse Helms, a Republican from North Carolina. They were the two leaders of the opposition to the holiday. The key resistance outside Congress was the Liberty Lobby and its spokesperson, Stanley Rittenhouse, and Julia Brown (Brown was Black). 

After many members from the Congressional Black Caucus testified in favor of the legislation, Mrs. King gave a passionate speech. She told the Senators, “That more than any other man, King was committed to achieving the words set out in the Declaration of Independence, and that all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights to include the pursuit of happiness through liberty.”

Unfortunately, Mrs. King’s words did not convince Thurmond, Helms, and the entire congregation of congressmen who opposed the holiday. Thurmond was the first to testify against the legislation. He argued that the holiday would be too expensive for the government after just having Christmas and New Year’s holidays. He suggested that since Dr. King was a preacher and Black Americans are religious, just have a day of recognition on the Sunday closest to his birthday. We overcame that opposition by having the Congressional Budget Office do a cost-benefit analysis. The study’s results indicated that the money spent on the holiday would bring in significant tax revenue for the government and quickly offset the money spent on holiday salaries for government employees. With the Congressional Budget Office figures, we could effectively dispel Thurmond’s claim of the cost. And we just dismissed his ridiculous suggestion that there be an observance of King on a Sunday. At that point, Thurmond backed off.

Helms’s opposition was based on his assertion that King was influenced by communists and may have been a communist. That argument was a “no-brainer.” We asked him to prove that King had ever attended a communist meeting, had professed any allegiance to the communist doctrine, and to reconcile how an ordained minister could possibly be a communist. This ideology essentially denies the existence of God. He was unable to support his position. 

Despite the excessive attacks on Dr. King and the tremendous opposition to the holiday (there had never been a bill passed honoring a civilian with a national holiday), our supporters for the King holiday never gave up. Because we were able to place it on the congressional agenda and facilitate discussion, we only had to listen to the opposition and, one by one, destroy their arguments against the holiday.

After a four-year up-and-down battle, the legislation finally passed in the United States Senate by a vote of 78 to 22 in 1983. It subsequently passed in the House of Representatives with 338 to 90. When President Ronald Reagan finally signed the bill into law on November 2, 1983, he made the following statement: “Dr. King had awakened something strong and true, a sense that true justice must be color blind and that among Black Americans, their destiny is tied up with our destiny, and their freedom is inextricably bound with our freedom; we cannot walk alone.” 

The most important remarks were by Mrs. King right after Reagan spoke. She summed up the importance of King to this country, stating: “In his own life’s example, he symbolized what was right about America, what was noblest and best, what human beings have pursued since the beginning of history. He loved unconditionally. He was in constant pursuit of truth, and when he discovered it, he embraced it.”