Today Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is publicly revered across the nation, a symbol of civil and human rights worthy of a memorial holiday. Federal and state legislatures have agreed to honor this man. But that agreement took awhile. The final state to acquiesce, New Hampshire, resisted the holiday until 1999. The story of that resistance reveals a public sentiment about King and the Black Freedom Struggle that is far from the reverence of today. This is the story of how a man becomes a national symbol, and the fight to make that so.
Transcript
Hannah McCarthy: This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy, and today we are doing something a little different. There is a reporter and producer here at New Hampshire Public Radio where we make Civics 101 named Jack Rodolico And for the past little while, Jack has been reporting out what I consider a really interesting, good story specifically. And I'm not going to bury the lead here. This is the story of how Martin Luther King Jr Day came to be a holiday at the federal level and in every state across the country. And the thing about this particular holiday is that it did not happen overnight, nor did it happen without a fight. And the most epic of those fights, the longest resistance to the holiday honoring Dr. King. It happened right here where we make this podcast. Jack got the details. Hello,
Hannah McCarthy: Jack Rodolico.
Jack Rodolico: Hello. It's good to be here with you.
Hannah McCarthy: It's good to have you here.
Jack Rodolico: I'm an honored I am honored to be a guest.
Hannah McCarthy: I'm an honor.
Jack Rodolico: I can't call myself an honor. That's not how that works. But I am honored to be here.
Hannah McCarthy: We are honored to have [00:01:00] you. And you have a story for us today.
Jack Rodolico: Yeah. Okay. So this is a story of MLK Day. Yep. How it became a thing. So there's this fact about New Hampshire that I have known for a long time, and it's honestly something that I found unsettling about this place where I have chosen to live. And I finally got to the point where I just needed to understand it. There's a story there, and I wanted to know what it was behind this fact. The fact is New Hampshire was the 50th state to recognize Martin Luther King Jr Day, the last state to do it.
Hannah McCarthy: When you say the last state, like, how long did this take?
Jack Rodolico: Well, New Hampshire, how long did it take? It was not a close race. It was not a close race. I mean, something like a decade and a half after the federal government, something like more than a decade after most states recognized MLK Day, that's [00:02:00] when New Hampshire got on board.
Hannah McCarthy: Why did it go down that way?
Jack Rodolico: I thought I wanted to know. And I think the most natural place to start is with a guy named Harvey Key. Introduce yourself.
Harvey Keye: My name is Harvey Kaye. I am a human rights activist. Period.
Jack Rodolico: Now, you were born.
Harvey Keye: In Birmingham, right? Yeah, 1932.
Jack Rodolico: So Harvey Key is 90 years old. He is like an extremely active 90 year old gentleman, still involved in the community, still involved in politics in different ways. He's the head of the New Hampshire Human Rights Commission, among other things.
Hannah McCarthy: So he was born in Birmingham. Now he's living in New Hampshire. Yeah. When did he come up here?
Jack Rodolico: Yeah, Harvey came up here with this family in the seventies. He raised his kids here. But Birmingham is what made Harvey Key who he is. The MLK story that you're about to hear. Harvey has told this before. In [00:03:00] fact, he once told it before the New Hampshire state legislature back in 1999. Harvey was a state rep at that time. As a little.
Harvey Keye: Boy, I could not walk the streets and look white people in the eye because that was a threat to white people. I could be arrested for disorderly conduct. I could not shine shoes on the street. I could not deliver paper on the streets.
Jack Rodolico: Harvey goes up deep in the Jim Crow South.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay, so this is this era following the end of reconstruction, right where there are all of these laws in a lot of former Confederate states and some border states that basically codified a racial caste system, they were anti Black, anti enfranchisement laws that dictated a whole swath of behaviors for how Black people in America would have to act.
Jack Rodolico: Yes. And enforced with state violence and vigilante violence.
Harvey Keye: As a young man, I saw many shootings [00:04:00] of colored men who supposedly had stolen something from a store and shot in the back by white policemen. For a long time. I found it difficult to look people in the eye. Sometimes I find it difficult now. At age 14. I had no self esteem. I didn't have much hope for being anybody. So I became a game gang leader. I was put in jail at age 15 for assault and battery with attempted murder.
Jack Rodolico: So Harvey is on this very precarious course as a young man. He's dejected, he's angry, and he's surrounded by violence against Black men like him. So he starts to respond with a bit of violence himself. That's how he describes it. At the same time, he wasn't entirely without hope and positive examples of what his life could become. He has Black role models. [00:05:00] He has Black teachers at school, people who give him some hope that he can have a future.
Harvey Keye: My mother had a fourth grade education and she said to me one time, If they can, you can. Well, I don't know what that meant at that time. I know now.
Jack Rodolico: Despite setbacks, despite being jailed at 15, Harvey gets out of jail and starts to do really well in school. He is very smart, very studious. He goes on to college and to grad school. He develops a stronger sense of self. But as an adult in Birmingham, he still has this hot coal of anger in his chest because whenever he tries to assert his rights or even just dream about his future, he cannot do it. He can't vote.
Harvey Keye: Told me if I wanted to vote, I had to count the number of beads in a jar.
Jack Rodolico: He can't get a job.
Harvey Keye: And I had a degree in pre-med. He said I had too much education. It didn't have enough. I don't know whatever they said, but I couldn't [00:06:00] get a job.
Jack Rodolico: He even joined the army and fought in Korea. But there he got no relief from the racism all around him. He tells this story about waiting in line at the mess hall.
Harvey Keye: One of the soldiers says, Why don't you get back there where you belong? Uniform on. Same troop. And he had the nerve to say, get in the back where you belong.
Jack Rodolico: And so after the Korean War, Harvey comes back to Birmingham and he's just getting fed up. You know, he has a lower tolerance and he's not easily intimidated. He starts carrying a gun and he says that he was ready to use it if he had to. And just as Harvey has taken all that he can. Martin Luther King Jr is about to advance the front line of the Black freedom struggle to Harvey's hometown of Birmingham. So in the spring of 1963, King and [00:07:00] other leaders of the Black Freedom struggle descend on Birmingham.
Archival: It was against this background That Dr. King was asked what he meant when he said that achievement of a breakthrough in Birmingham.
Could crack the whole South.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Well, Birmingham is a symbol of hardcore resistance to integration. It is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. And they just had more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: And in a city in The United States.
Jack Rodolico: There is this campaign to desegregate the city. And King and others at the time said, you know, so goes Birmingham, so goes the country potentially. Right? That was the idea. And it's this 63 is this whiplash window of time in Birmingham. A lot of things that we might know about from history books happened in this like six month period. There were hundreds of arrests.
Archival: Arrests were made in mass lots. Everyone charged with the same offense parading without a permit. [00:08:00] The Negroes had asked for permits and had been denied them.
Jack Rodolico: King's letter from a Birmingham jail he wrote that year. There was a children's march where kids were blasted with fire hoses. These are images of the civil rights movement that many people have seen attacked by police dogs. There was even that church bombing where four little girls were murdered at a church.
Archival: And they died in Birmingham at the 16th Street Baptist Church, rallying point of the Negro drive in the nation's most segregated big city. Dynamite exploded on a Sunday morning, killed four little girls in Sunday school, injured 20 other Negro.
Jack Rodolico: So through all this, there is this one place in the city that serves as a hub for all of this civil rights activity for King and other activists. It's called the AG Gaston Motel.
Harvey Keye: It's the only motel in the city of Birmingham [00:09:00] that allowed colored folks Negroes to spend the night.
Jack Rodolico: Now, Harvey didn't ever spend a night there, but there was a hotel bar, which was one of the only places he and his friends could drink.
Harvey Keye: We used to have a few cool ones, I think. You know what I mean? On this one day we were having a cool one and Martin Luther King was having a conference with some of his SLC leaders or members. And shortly after, a big bomb blew a hole in the wall.
Jack Rodolico: The day in 1963 after the city and protesters announce a truce. Someone detonates a bomb at the A.G. Gaston Motel. It's an explosion. It tears through the building, actually just below the room where King and others were organizing.
Harvey Keye: And me and my boys were ready to go after them because we were tough and young and not too smart. But we were ready to pick up [00:10:00] anything. We had to go and get the guys and kill them.
Jack Rodolico: Now, before Harvey acts on this impulse, which could very likely get him killed for whatever reason, before he does, he decides to do something else. He's heard about this man, Dr. King.
Harvey Keye: You know, he was just a preacher, you know.
Jack Rodolico: And he goes to this press conference to hear King speak, and he says he was electrified. That was his word, electrified. And after the speech, he talks to.
Harvey Keye: King and he could see the anger on our face. He said, hey, where are you going? What are you doing? And we said, we're going to go and get him. He said, No, that's not the way we do it. And he gave us some other kind of a soap story that would mean a soft soap. In other words, you you That's not the way we're going to fight this battle.
Jack Rodolico: However, you cannot quote what [00:11:00] Dr. King said to him in that moment. Harvey does remember exactly how it made him feel.
Harvey Keye: And he didn't say it, that I can't remember exactly what he said, but whatever he said changed. It was impressive enough that I didn't carry a gun anymore.
Jack Rodolico: But something like that. Did it change?
Harvey Keye: It changed.
Jack Rodolico: But you didn't even know who he was.
Harvey Keye: Didn't know he was.
Jack Rodolico: He was just that charismatic.
Harvey Keye: Yes.
Jack Rodolico: In this moment, Harvey was sort of looking off into the distance. And I swear it felt like for a moment he was back in 1963, this young man on the verge of vengeance with all of these emotions standing in front of Dr. King and changing. And he just froze up while we were talking. It feels like you're there. Yeah. Excuse me.
Harvey Keye: Yeah. It's [00:12:00] tough. It's hard to think. That other human beings treated us so poorly. But I was changed from feeling the hate about how I was treated as a youngster in Birmingham, but I was changed instantly a better off because I carry I want to say it this way. He never said this. A pocket full of happiness. Wherever I go now, I didn't have that before.
Jack Rodolico: This is the story of what it took for America, for all of America to set aside a single day to honor a single Black life. It is a life that profoundly [00:13:00] changed those of others. But it's not actually a story about milk. It's a story about the politics of transforming a person into an official national symbol. Harvey Quay is going to play a role in the final stage of that transformation, as will the state of New Hampshire, and will return there soon. But I want to stay in the sixties for just a moment here, because, of course, that is where this all starts. The story actually starts right after Martin Luther King was assassinated. So he is murdered. Memphis, Tennessee, April 4th, 1968. And immediately there is this massive outpouring of grief across the country, particularly in Black communities.
Archival: This is [00:14:00] how Washington looked from the air tonight. At one point early in the evening, more than 100 fires were burning, some of them in an area just 20 blocks from the White House.
Jack Rodolico: In the immediate days after King's assassination, there are riots, particularly in northern cities across the United States.
Archival: And as darkness fell, arrests increased. To this hour, More than 700 people have been arrested. Some of them picked up in spot checks by police enforcing the curfew.
Jack Rodolico: You know, and this is this expression of frustration with, you know, living conditions, with job opportunities, everything that King stood for and fought for in the Black freedom struggle. You know, it's not like everything had been fixed by 1968. And so it was just this overflowing outpouring of anger and grief.
John Conyers: And so I said, what what is the greatest honor that I could pay this man? What do I do now?
Jack Rodolico: Okay, so this is John [00:15:00] Conyers. He's dead now. This tape is from 2008. And Conyers was a Democratic congressman from Michigan. He actually served in the House for 52 years, and he was one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Influential guy for a long time. Back in 1968. He was only in his second term in the House. And after King was assassinated, Conyers wants to do something. And he has an idea that would become the seed of this huge social movement.
John Conyers: And I called Coretta Scott King, and I asked her permission and agreement. And we introduced the bill four days after his assassination.
Hannah McCarthy: All right. What bill is he talking about here?
Jack Rodolico: Conyers bill would set aside the third Monday of January as a federal holiday. The federal government [00:16:00] would shut down every year specifically to honor King's life and sacrifice. Now, today, we live in a world where King is pretty much universally recognized as a hero. That was not the case when he was alive. I mean, he was very popular among Black Americans, but among whites, he was divisive. He was unpopular. I mean, there was actually a national poll that found 31% of respondents said that King brought his death upon himself.
Hannah McCarthy: Wow.
Jack Rodolico: So in 1968, Conyers bill went nowhere in the House. But while the federal government sat on its hands, the idea of an m.k day starts to grow in popularity at the local level. All throughout the seventies.
John Conyers: It happened from the ground up because the theory was, well, there's a lot of emotion [00:17:00] around losing Dr. King. But as the years would pass, the enthusiasm would diminish. But just the opposite happened.
Jack Rodolico: Activists and local governments start to say, okay, if Congress won't declare a King holiday, then we'll declare a local king holiday. Cities like D.C., St Louis, Atlanta celebrate MLK Day. Those were the first MLK Day celebrations. Often, they were just activists without government sanction, celebrating on their own. But cities very quickly got on board.
John Conyers: In local areas in schools. States passed resolution.
Jack Rodolico: So you could see this momentum start to grow. State legislatures declare state holidays. The first one was Illinois, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey. Follow. And it actually starts to become a bit of a red line in politics. Are you for the holiday or are you against it? That becomes a symbol for other things that you believe in.
Hannah McCarthy: I don't know if you'll actually know the answer to this question, but let's give it [00:18:00] a shot. So, you know, you're saying that it's happening at the school level, happening at the city level, at the state level. Was there a shift among the sort of whole body politic when it came to sentiment about Martin Luther King?
Jack Rodolico: Yes, there was actually, because there is polling on King's popularity before he died and after he died, actually for years going up into recent years. And every single poll through the decades finds that he has more, particularly among white Americans, more and more. Virtually recognized as a hero in the seventies, the picture was still very muddled. But you did have cities and you did have local places that were fully on board. Before everybody else.
John Conyers: Unions started, including as a collective bargaining day in their negotiations. And more people began joining on the bill in the Congress. [00:19:00]
Jack Rodolico: So then the local pressure boomerangs back to Congress.
Archival: I support the Democratic platform, call for making his birthday a national holiday, and I will work for it.
Jack Rodolico: So in 1979, President Jimmy Carter gives a speech at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. This was the church where King was a pastor. He is there with Coretta Scott King behind him. All of these civil rights activists. And he publicly throws his support behind the bill. It's a big deal.
Archival: And I particularly hope that in this 50th anniversary year that I will be able to sign a bill proclaiming January the 15th as a national holiday in honor of Dr. King's principles.
Jack Rodolico: The momentum is moving. The bill does go to the House floor. It loses by five votes that year. So Jimmy Carter does not get that opportunity, but it sort of enters the public consciousness [00:20:00] in a way that it had not before, particularly because this is one of the most interesting things I feel like I learned. Okay. Stevie Wonder.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah.
Jack Rodolico: The Stevie Wonder. Happy Birthday song.
Hannah McCarthy: I know it well.
Jack Rodolico: I know it well. Okay, So if you ask me, this is the best birthday song. It's better than the birthday song, right? It's just a it's a birthday anthem. I have heard it all my life. And Stevie Wonder wrote this song for Martin Luther King Day. He released it in 1980, specifically calling out the whole country. Why won't we honor this man? Why not create a holiday? The hook is happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. But the rest of the song, all of the lyrics are about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Hannah McCarthy: I cannot believe I didn't realize that.
Jack Rodolico: I did not either.
Archival: And like for all of you to please join me urging the US Senate and your Senators [00:21:00] in particular to vote yes on s400 a bill to make. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's birthday A national holiday.
Jack Rodolico: So in 1982, Stevie Wonder and Coretta Scott King deliver 6 million signatures to the speaker of the House supporting this holiday and the next year. In 1983, 15 years after John Conyers first introduced the bill, it passes in the House by a wide margin, 338 to 90. So makes it out of the House, and then it goes to the Senate, where it passes by another wide margin, 78 to 22, but only after some very anti MLK filibustering on the part of Jesse Helms. He was a North Carolina senator who made campaign commercials along the lines of this.
Archival: You needed that job.
And you were the best qualified. But they had [00:22:00] to give it to a minority because of a racial quota. Is that really fair?
Jack Rodolico: The commercial shows just a pair of white hands.
Hannah McCarthy: Wow.
Jack Rodolico: It was actually called White Hands. That's what the commercial was known as.
Hannah McCarthy: Unbelievable.
Jack Rodolico: So the Senate shuts Helms' filibuster down as quickly as it can, but not before he gets across some pretty forceful messaging about MLK being a communist.
Hannah McCarthy: Which I feel we should say he was not.
Jack Rodolico: He was not. Mlk was not a communist. But it's worth bringing up because plenty of people across the country, predominantly white people, agreed with Helms assessment of milk, which would be a part of King's legacy for a long time. Anyway, the bill passes. Reagan signs it into law.
Archival: The White House staged an impressive ceremony today. The president and Dr. King's widow walking into the Rose Garden together in an effort to spruce up Mr. [00:23:00] Reagan's tattered civil rights image. The president signed the bill, which he had so strongly opposed, making Martin Luther King Jr's birthday a national holiday.
Archival: Then we will see the day when Dr. King's dream comes true and in his words, all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning. Land where my fathers died. Land of the pilgrim's pride. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. Thank you. God bless you. And I extend.
Hannah McCarthy: We're going to take a quick break. But before we do, a reminder that Civics 101, all of the work that we do here, [00:24:00] this story that Jack brought us, it's all made possible because our listeners support us both in spirit and when possible, with donations. This is public radio. That's how we work. If you're in a position to make a contribution to the show, please consider doing so. It's quick, it's easy, and it's a way for you to show your belief in free, accessible civics education and good stories. Click the donate button on our home page at civics101podcast.org. You're listening to Civics one on one. I'm Hannah McCarthy. And today we are talking to reporter and producer Jack RODOLICO about the creation of Martin Luther King Junior Day. This holiday did not come about without a fight. Many fights, in fact. But in 1983, Ronald Reagan finally did sign a bill making MLK Day a federal holiday, which means that it was recognized by the federal government, [00:25:00] but not that it had to be recognized by the states. All right. So we've got this federal holiday. Jack, you have established that there are states across the nation celebrating Martin Luther King's birthday as a holiday in that state or in a city or even in a school district. But as I know, a federal holiday does not mean that everyone in the country has to do it right. It's still up to the states as to whether or not they want to make it a holiday. So how many states are left who are not doing this?
Jack Rodolico: Well, Reagan signs the bill in 83. The first federal holiday is three years later in 86. And by 1986, 44 states officially recognize MLK Day. So by the time the first federal holiday comes around, there are only a handful of states that are refusing to create the Martin Luther King Junior holiday. [00:26:00] And Hanna, I will tell you, you and I are sitting in one of those states. And so yeah.
Jack Rodolico: For this handful of recalcitrant state legislatures, this starts to become a pretty potent issue. So, for example, in 1987, Governor Evan Mecham, basically as soon as he is inaugurated, rescinds Arizona's MLK Day.
Hannah McCarthy: So Arizona had signed it into state law.
Jack Rodolico: It had been by executive order, his predecessor.
Jack Rodolico: He ran campaigning that he would remove that executive order. And he does.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay.
Jack Rodolico: For what it's worth, he was later impeached for other issues. Wow. In Idaho, one lawmaker claims MLK Day is a, quote, Black holiday. [00:27:00] And another state lawmaker in Idaho says forget milk. Let's name a holiday after a real Black hero. I'm paraphrasing here, Bill Cosby. Okay.
Hannah McCarthy: Can you imagine?
Jack Rodolico: I cannot. I mean, obviously, these positions don't age very well. Now, New Hampshire is on that list, too. And kind of like Congress had for a very long time. The New Hampshire legislature mostly ignored the King holiday debate until they couldn't. The King State holiday bill first came up in New Hampshire in 1979, but it took a decade for the pressure to build up. And I want to give you a sense of the lawmakers who were at the state house when this discussion came to a head.
Linda Diane Long: It was hard to hide at that time. You could not just blend in. You can stand in the sea of 400 white people and still hold your own. You're not doing too bad.
Jack Rodolico: This is Democrat Linda Diane Long. She's now a Baptist minister in Georgia. [00:28:00] And in the late eighties, she was one of a small handful of Black lawmakers in New Hampshire's 400 member House of Representatives. Next up.
Wayne Burton: You have to understand, I was a full time assistant dean that year. H Right. And a full time legislator and a full time doctoral student with three kids. And I coached hockey and soccer and baseball.
Jack Rodolico: That's Wayne Burton, a Democrat and retired college administrator. And finally, Jackie Domaingue, a Republican. She splits her time now between New Hampshire and Florida, which is where I found her.
Jackie Domaingue: Her when I entered the legislature in 1987. I was 37 years old. The average age is 63.
Jack Rodolico: So the MLK Day pressure is coming from both outside the state of New Hampshire.
Linda Diane Long: We were seeing nationally how the national push for the holiday had picked up steam when Stevie Wonder wrote, you know, the song. And Jesse [00:29:00] Jackson, of course, was running for president.
Jack Rodolico: And from inside the state, from the state's biggest city.
Jackie Domaingue: The Manchester school board determined, wanting to recognize Martin Luther King Day in the hopes that it would help get it passed at the state level.
Jack Rodolico: So 1989 is a big year for the bill in New Hampshire. It is the first time that the public really turns out in force to tell the legislature to pass this bill.
Linda Diane Long: And the hearing itself started off very emotional, you know, with prayer. It was packed. We had children. We had white people, we had Black people, we had Native Americans, a variety of people speaking that day. So it wasn't a Black issue.
Jack Rodolico: A few members of the public spoke against the King holiday. Most spoke in favor. So break this down a little bit for me. You're asked to orchestrate the theater of a floor fight. Five monologues.
Wayne Burton: I would speak last because I had the story [00:30:00] of meeting Dr. King.
Jack Rodolico: One of the reasons Wayne Burton cared so much about a King holiday bill is that he met Martin Luther King back in 1964. Ml K came to Wayne's College in Maine for a lecture, and he met him in person. And, you know, as Harvey said earlier, it was just a life altering experience for him.
Wayne Burton: So he sat down on a couch and we were talking quite a while. And after a while I said to him, This is all wonderful stuff, but what's it got to do with me, a white kid or a white school in an all white state? And that's when he said, If your conscience stops at the border of Maine, you're less of a person than you should be, and yours is responsible for what happens in Birmingham as you are in Brunswick, Maine. And I was really taken aback. I'd never been challenged like that. We have a borderless conscience.
Jack Rodolico: Okay. [00:31:00] So now, for her part, Jacky Domaingue had been asked to speak to, but for the opposing side.
Jackie Domaingue: I was not a fan of Martin Luther King. I understood what he did. But unfortunately for me, I'm the daughter of an Army corporal who served on Iwo Jima, and I lost several classmates from elementary school to high school to the Vietnam War and comments that Dr. King had made.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: But they asked, and rightly so. What about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problem, bring about the changes it wanted.
My questions hit home and I knew that I could never again.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed and the ghetto without having first spoken [00:32:00] clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. My own government.
Jack Rodolico: It's a little hard to hear there, but that is King calling the United States the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. He compares state violence against Black Americans to America's violence against the Vietnamese. And many Americans, particularly white Americans, considered his words an insult.
Jackie Domaingue: They didn't volunteer for that war. They were drafted and lost their lives. I felt it was unkind what he had said. And so I got on the floor and opposed the bill.
Jack Rodolico: Now, there were lawmakers at the time who were much more cutting. One called King, quote, an evil man. And this did come down to partizan politics. I mean, New Hampshire was controlled top down by Republicans. It basically had been for about 100 years. This is a state at the time where the most powerful media outlet [00:33:00] was a newspaper, the Union Leader, And that paper's editorial board was vehemently against MLK Day. Lawmakers are picking this paper up every day and reading it. And between 1988 and 1991. The Union Leader published an even 100 editorials and editorial cartoons about MLCs Day, relentlessly attacking King and his legacy and his supporters. They called him treasonous. They called him a demagogue. So what was it like to sit there and listen to people propagate these? You know.
Linda Diane Long: Just that they had a blood pressure about 300 or 2000 during that time.
Wayne Burton: They tried to demonize Dr. King by saying he was a communist because he had gone to North Vietnam during the war.
Jack Rodolico: How did you take that communism line as a Vietnam veteran yourself?
Wayne Burton: I took it quite badly [00:34:00] because I had spent I had almost been killed several times killing communists. And then to be accused of being a communist myself got me angry, quite honestly.
Jack Rodolico: So after the hearing, Wayne Burton was in the press a lot. He became sort of a de facto spokesman for the holiday bill. And because of that. T had a target on his back.
Wayne Burton: And I started getting anonymous letters without return addresses. King is a crime. He get out of our country and the cut out little letters out of Time magazine and so hate sentences. And there was some death threats to me and my kids that people would call on the phone, my house phone.
Jack Rodolico: Address how you're pointing to your phone and the next.
Wayne Burton: yeah.
Jack Rodolico: Same house. Yeah.
Wayne Burton: And I it's I was just astounded that someone would would do that.
Jack Rodolico: Were you scared for your life? I mean, how did you contextualize those threats?
Wayne Burton: Yes, [00:35:00] I was it was not dissimilar to some of the feelings I had in Vietnam. It is a terrible feeling to think that the price of doing the right thing may be your life.
Hannah McCarthy: And I just want to pause here and reflect on this. We are talking about a man who was trying to pass a state holiday, right?
Jack Rodolico: Mm hmm.
Jack Rodolico: In 1989, the holiday bill died in New Hampshire House by a wide margin. Like legislators voted almost 3 to 1 against it.
Hannah McCarthy: Wow.
Linda Diane Long: I wasn't that hopeful. I had hoped that it would change some minds from the hearing. I really hope the hearings would have opened some eyes, but it didn't. [00:36:00]
Jack Rodolico: So, again, it wasn't terribly surprising that the bill failed. What is surprising, at least to me, is Jackie Domain's response. Now, remember, she was opposed to this bill. Did that feel like a victory?
Jackie Domaingue: No. Evans No. It was very sad, I confess. Really? Yes. Yeah. It was very sad. It stayed with me for a long time. Yes, we won. But what did we want?
Hannah McCarthy: Wait. Okay. So Jackie and other Republicans, they got what they wanted, right? I mean, this is this is what they were aiming for. So why would she reflect on that and feel sad? That doesn't track for me.
Jack Rodolico: So after the vote, Jackie says someone in the antechamber of the house screamed at her and called her a racist. This person had tears in their eyes. And Jackie says that whatever [00:37:00] her personal feelings are about Martin Luther King, she also understood how important he was to so many other people. And she didn't like the feeling of obstructing progress. She says most New Hampshire voters at that time weren't ready for an MLCs day, so she wound up proposing something that she felt could pass the House.
Jackie Domaingue: The Purpose of a Civil Rights Day was to get to move the issue forward and not leave it where it had been left in 1989 in anger.
Jack Rodolico: In 1991, the state Senate was ready to create an RMC holiday. They passed a bill to do that, but the House was not, so they compromised. New Hampshire became the only state in the country that celebrated Civil Rights Day. One state rep at the time who hated this compromise said, quote, We would have been more honest to call it the anything but Martin [00:38:00] Luther King holiday.
Hannah McCarthy: We're going to take a quick break here, but when we're back, it is the final insistent push to once and for all spread the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr's life and work to every state in the nation. We're back. You're listening to Civics 101. And today, reporter and producer Jack RODOLICO is sharing the story of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the decades long struggle to make it truly a nationwide holiday.
Jack Rodolico: Okay, so, Hannah, this final stretch of the story is the part that I was honestly most curious about because the holiday bill seemingly enters this purgatory period. In hindsight, it feels inevitable [00:39:00] that New Hampshire would do this. But it's going to take all of the nineties, like all of the nineties. So what is going on? What does it take for New Hampshire to finally honor the holiday? That's what I wanted to know. I kind of assumed the bill languished, but in fact it.
Ray Joseph: Didn't at the time. For us, it was pure racism.
Jack Rodolico: This is Ray Joseph, and this is where things get really kind of unwieldy and unpredictable. So in 1990, Ray is a student at St Paul's School. Saint Paul's is one of America's most exclusive boarding schools, a high school. Historically, boarding schools are like the epitome of WASPy exclusive institutions, but at this time they were diversifying and Ray was part of a minority of very bright Black students on the Saint Paul's campus. By the way, Saint Paul's school is two miles from the New Hampshire State House.
Ray Joseph: You've got to [00:40:00] remember, this was the late eighties. So we were listening to Public Enemy, Fight the Power, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. So it wasn't me, but one of my roommates said we should boycott, we should not go to school. And it was that seed of an idea that wound up turning into something to bigger.
Jack Rodolico: So Ray in some classmates are like, This is BS. And at first they say, let's walk out of school tomorrow. This is the night before MLCs day in 1990. But they actually start talking to school administrators like the headmaster. And he says, well, actually, I was going to give you the day off. And you see, this was actually happening all over the state. School administrators, all over New Hampshire were saying, forget what the state government says. We make our calendars. So we're going to give students the day off for MLCs Day. But Ray and his classmates weren't satisfied with that. They are sharp. They are young. A lot of them are from New York City, and they [00:41:00] are just opening their eyes to the culture in New Hampshire.
Tommieka Teixiera: Yeah. You know, in my 15 year old mind, it was just New Hampshire was just a place that was beautiful and just empty of all forms of joy and entertainment. You know, it was just you know, we had light of FM. I think it was one on 1.9 was the only radio station. I mean, they didn't even play Bon Jovi. I mean, it was, you know, no Depeche Mode, no anything.
Jack Rodolico: This is Tommieka Teixeira, another Saint Paul student in 1990.
Linda Diane Long: I didn't know that there were people who would not celebrate MLK Day. Like, what do you even talking about? That's unfathomable to me, right?
Jack Rodolico: It wasn't just that they saw an omission of Black culture in New Hampshire. Tiffany Gill, another student, says this was sometimes a hostile environment for her.
Tiffany Gill: The first and only time I've ever been called a racial epithet that I've heard was walking down Main Street in Concord, New Hampshire, as a high school student.
Jack Rodolico: So MLK Day 1990, The [00:42:00] Saint Paul's kids are like, We can't protest the school, but the school winds up sanctioning the protest and joining it.
Hannah McCarthy: That feels so rare to me.
Jack Rodolico: Doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. The school was really on board and they made a plan together. Students and faculty and administrators walk from Saint Paul's two miles to the state house.
Ray Joseph: And so we spent the preceding night that Sunday night developing, you know, signs, wristbands, armbands. I remember filing out of chapel just as that New Hampshire snow begins to fall upon us. It was cold, as it always was in January in New Hampshire.
Tiffany Gill: It was a it was a warm feeling. It was beautiful. It was a beautiful line of us walking, you know, off the grounds together.
Tommieka Teixiera: Nothing had been plowed. And we all just came out with [00:43:00] excitement, with a little fear. I think we didn't know what we were to encounter and cars honking and showing support.
Jack Rodolico: You know, something they all kind of reflect on is that it was kind of like MLK had given them a roadmap for what to do in this situation. March Right. Go to the seat of power, make your demands known.
Tiffany Gill: You know, for us, it was like our mini civil rights movement.
Ray Joseph: We believe that it's time for change. But honoring Dr. Kent with a state.
Jack Rodolico: Holiday, is this the video with you, with the bullhorn?
Ray Joseph: You got it. That's exactly right.
Jack Rodolico: Yeah.
Ray Joseph: I declare our commitment to realizing King's dreams of eradicating racism, poverty and violence.
Jack Rodolico: So ultimately, this was inspiring for these Saint Paul's kids involved. But they had no political clout in New Hampshire. And they knew that. Right. They're not old enough to vote. They're not residents of the state. Their parents don't pay taxes here. So after the 1990 March, they [00:44:00] start to reach out.
Mike Vlasich: I was Forrest Gump in all this. So you have to understand, I was just in the right place, the right time.
Jack Rodolico: This is Mike Vlasic. He was a kid in the Concord Public High School at the time. By the way, Mike is now a Biden appointee in the Small Business Administration. And I have to tell you, like the number of youth involved in this milk fight in the 1990s in New Hampshire, to me, anyway, seemingly a big percentage of them are lifelong activists. And they will they will tell you that this was activating for them for the rest of their lives. Back then, Mike was a kid who had no contact with this exclusive school in town.
Mike Vlasich: If you're a Concord High public school student, interacting with St Paul's kids was not the norm for something so close to us, that institution. We wouldn't have thought that we were part of that.
Jack Rodolico: Saint Paul students and Concord High kids start a letter campaign and they invite kids to protest with them so that in 1991, more than 1000 [00:45:00] high schoolers descend on the state house lawn.
Arnie Alpert: So that was a cool thing again, because you had the basically the Black kids from the elite school with the white Townees.
Jack Rodolico: This is Arnie Alpert. Arnie had been advocating for Milk Day in New Hampshire since the early eighties. He was on a committee of active. It's dedicated to this cause. But, you know, they were all adults. They were all politicos, you know? For him to see a thousand kids come out for Milk Day. It felt like this thing had finally taken on its own momentum.
Arnie Alpert: Because the state was resisting the holiday. It actually made it more important. It was a holiday of celebration and resistance at the same time.
Jack Rodolico: Up until this point had it, there wasn't too much national press about New Hampshire's stance on MLK Day. But that was about to change because Arizona was about to painfully become the 49th state. So [00:46:00] this part of the story is kind of bananas to me. In 1990, the NFL, the National Football League Awards, the Super Bowl to Tempe, Arizona.
Hannah McCarthy: As in Tempe will host the Super Bowl.
Jack Rodolico: Tempe will host the Super Bowl and it will draw in the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Super Bowl brings in to that area. So the NFL says, okay, Arizona, you're in line to host the Super Bowl. But there's a caveat. We will take this game away from you if you continue to reject MLK Day. This is not a popular stance for the NFL to take at the time. The question, though, goes to a popular referendum. And Arizona voters reject MLK Day by a slim margin and the NFL follows through. It takes the Super Bowl away from Arizona with all of its profits. It's a projected $225 million would come into the state. So it's effectively a massive boycott.
Archival: Nfl Commissioner Paul Tagliabue [00:47:00] said. Arizona can continue its political debate without the Super Bowl as a factor, site selection Chairman Norman Braman said. How could anybody in his right mind go to play there?
Jack Rodolico: And I mean, Hannah, like Public Enemy, wrote a song at this time called By the Time I Get to Arizona, it is a tirade against Arizona about MLK Day. And in the song, which is really good, they namecheck New Hampshire.
Sister Souljah: Public Enemy believes that the powers.
Sister Souljah: That be in the states of New Hampshire and Arizona have found psychological discomfort in paying tribute.
To a Black man tried to teach white people the meaning of civilization. Good luck, brothers.
Hannah McCarthy: I mean, this is just so interesting, right? I understand why these songs are being written. It's not just Happy Birthday, right? It's also Public Enemy because it's like this is an unbelievably public display of pretty hard to deny racism.
Jack Rodolico: Yes. Well, and if you think about if you think about birthday song, Stevie Wonder, this is a happy go lucky song, right? Yeah. And because it's really kind [00:48:00] of calling out every way, Public Enemy, it's like you don't want to be Arizona or New Hampshire. And Public Enemy's crosshairs is very different, calling out America for racism and being in those crosshairs as one state. Yeah. So it starts to get pretty intense for these last final states. And then in 1993, Arizona voters redeem themselves. They approve MLK Day finally. And Stevie Wonder and Rosa Parks come to Arizona on MLK Day as a kind of a reward to the state, you know, And then the eyes of the nation turn to just one state. And it's like New Hampshire, whether it intended or not, sent up a racist bat signal. There is huge press coverage in 1996 of a white supremacist from Mississippi who gets a permit to demonstrate at the New Hampshire State House on MLK Day. He comes here to thank lawmakers.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh, man, that's a bad look.
Jack Rodolico: It's a bad look. [00:49:00]
Archival: Last year's celebrations were marred by white supremacists from Mississippi, but this year, only one dissenter was found in the crowd, far outnumbered by the young people seeking change.
Archival: Because it's our future, you know, even though the adults they're important to.
Archival: But You know, it's going to be us up there next. And we want our children to have a better future than, you know.
Jack Rodolico: By now. It's the mid 1990s and this is when it feels like, come on, it's got to happen. In 1996, the political landscape in New Hampshire starts shifting dramatically. The state elects a Democratic governor for the first time in a long time. A woman, Jeanne Shaheen, who's currently New Hampshire's senior senator. She campaigns on MLK Day. And Democrats make big gains in the state house with women at the helm. Jackie Weatherspoon was elected to the New Hampshire House that year. She was the third Black woman ever elected to the New Hampshire House. In 1997. She was on the House floor when the MLK [00:50:00] bill lost again. This time, the vote count was 178 to 177.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh.
Jackie Weatherspoon: I was there. Oh, my God. We lost that by one vote. And you could just hear it, see it, feel it when we lost by one vote. And then it became something like we became a laughingstock. We lost. It was the humiliation.
Hannah McCarthy: That's like an insult. That's just, ooh.
Jack Rodolico: Well, it just becomes like, what's it going to take?
Hannah McCarthy: Right, Right.
Jack Rodolico: You know, Maya Angelou spoke out. Spike Lee spoke out. Stevie Wonder, you know, Public Enemy wrote a song. I mean, so was that an element of like, you don't tell us what to do no matter what it's about, don't tell us what to do.
Mike Vlasich: I think for a certain element that was an excuse that they were using and they were not understanding that there was an increasing grassroots movement in New Hampshire that wasn't. [00:51:00] Political over the years. The further we have gotten from the civil rights movement, there has been a tendency to turn Martin Luther King into something of a Santa Claus of the movement.
Jack Rodolico: Tiffany Gill, one of the Saint Paul students, she's actually now a historian and associate professor at Rutgers University. And for her, looking back on this window of time, in a way, it's not really about New Hampshire per se. It's about the disconnect between the way MLK is viewed today, the way he was viewed when he was alive, and the slow march from one perspective to the other.
Tiffany Gill: One of the things that I always say is that I have to avoid social media on Martin Luther King Day because we are inundated from every political side with sort of shrinking Martin Luther King down into slogans and phrases. So it erases the fact that there was such [00:52:00] hatred toward King that he was not the beloved figure, that he has come to be within memory. His life was under constant surveillance by the FBI. His family was attacked and that he was ultimately assassinated.
Jack Rodolico: In 1999, the table was finally set. Or so it seemed. The MLK Day bill had failed in the New Hampshire House every time it had come up for the prior 20 years. So nothing was a sure bet. And proponents of the bill wanted a closer somebody who was really going to make a case, and they picked to give the last word to Harvey Quay.
Archival: Because the final speaker, the member from Nashua, representative key members to be taking their seats. A roll call has been requested. We're on the last speaker. [00:53:00]
Harvey Keye: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Honorable men and women of this historic House of Representatives, I rise to support the addition of Martin Luther King's name to the current House Bill 68.
Jack Rodolico: You remember Harvey? Of course.
Hannah McCarthy: Yes, of course.
Jack Rodolico: It's hard to forget from the beginning of the story, that old tape we heard of him earlier. That was from his floor speech to the New Hampshire House in 1999. He told them about meeting King and a few other things, too.
Harvey Keye: I have a granddaughter who is six years old, and she wrote me a poem and she said.
Papa, papa.
Harvey Keye: All the way from Alabama with a banjo on your knee up to New Hampshire to help keep people free. It's tough for me. Members [00:54:00] of this august board, please vote for Bill 68.
Archival: The question before the.
House is the adoption of a majority committee report has to be in order. The House will be in order.
Jack Rodolico: On May 25th, 1999, the New Hampshire House, the final stubborn block of resistance in America to honoring Martin Luther King Jr with a holiday. It voted 212 to 148 to do just that. I asked Harvey, How did that feel?
Harvey Keye: Heavenly.
Jack Rodolico: Harvey has lived for 90 years of unimaginable change, right? He was born under the thumb of Jim Crow. And now he and his wife own their home in New Hampshire. He has grown kids and [00:55:00] grandkids, and he sees history to him for what it is. You know, things move forward. Then they wrench backwards, back and forth. And all he can control is how he feels about it and how he feels is a gift. He was handed in Birmingham by Martin Luther King Jr.
Harvey Keye: I have a pocket full of joy and I hope to keep carrying a pocketful of joy everywhere I go. And that makes me 99.9% happy all of the time.
Hannah McCarthy: This [00:56:00] episode was produced by Jack Rodolico and me, Hannah McCarthy Nick Capodice is my co-host. Christina Phillips is our senior producer. Jacqui Fulton is our producer and Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. You can find helpful links, resources and our entire episode archive at our website, civics101podcast.org. Special thanks to Steve Davis, Arnie Alpert, Meg Heckman, Jada Hebra, Marci Chang and Eleanor Dunphy. Music in this episode by Dilating Times, Nul Tiel Records meter ScanGlobe, Shaolin Dub, Anemoia, Kirk Osamayo and Chris Zabriskie. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.