When King was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, he was there to back striking sanitation workers who were pushing for higher wages among other work reforms. The leader had been a strong labor union supporter and set the demand for fair wages and “full employment” as a centerpiece of his activism. Yet by 1981 only 13 states had recognized it - to some degree.Īs early as 1969, Black and brown union workers had begun to agitate in favor of the King holiday. By 1973, King’s hometown of Atlanta had designated the day as a legal holiday. 15 birthday a holiday (they claim they were the first government body in the U.S. On the day of King’s funeral, one south New Jersey town’s school board swiftly passed a resolution declaring his Jan. Instantaneously, both official and unofficial memorials and commemorations cropped up in cities and towns across the country. Shirley Chisholm resubmitted the proposal each subsequent congressional session until it gained the votes needed to pass. submitted a bill to make King’s birthday a national holiday but the measure failed to gain popular support. stands with other civil rights leaders on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., on April 3, 1968, a day before he was assassinated at approximately the same place.įour days after an assassin’s bullet struck the peace activist on April 4, 1968, Michigan Congressman John Conyers Jr.
Not long before his 18th birthday, his hero was dead. At 16, he would meet King at a Chicago Freedom Movement rally. Wonder first recalled hearing the young Black minister speak on the radio when he was 5 years old and news of a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, traveled to Detroit. King’s life and death left an indelible mark on him. Wonder and his 1980 single would play an outsize role in the creation of Martin Luther King Day the first national holiday honoring a Black American, celebrated on the third Monday of January each year. “I said, ‘Well, no, I really believe it will',” Wonder added. “We’re in a time where I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Wonder recounted. The song in question was Wonder’s 1980 release “Happy Birthday,” now lovingly known to African Americans as the Black version of the traditional song. CNN's Anderson Cooper interviews Stevie Wonder in 2011 about the Motown star's years-long push for a M.L.
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