It's Monday, Jan. 16, the day Americans officially pay homage to Martin Luther King Jr., born January 15, 1929. The legislation to make it a federal holiday passed Congress in 1983 and was signed into law on Nov. 2, 1983, by Ronald Reagan.
Although the 40th president of the United States had been lukewarm in support of the establishment of a new holiday, by the time the bill arrived at his desk, he was fully behind both the letter and spirit of the new law. Reagan began his signing ceremony remarks by invoking the words of American poet John Greenleaf Whittier. "Each crisis brings its word and deed," he wrote.
Reagan added, "In America, in the fifties and sixties, one of the important crises we faced was racial discrimination. The man whose words and deeds in that crisis stirred our nation to the very depths of its soul was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr."
In each session of Congress since the Rev. King was martyred in 1968, Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, had faithfully introduced a bill to make the civil rights hero's death a national holiday. Gradually, support for the idea increased, and by 1983, Conyers harbored realistic hopes of marking the 15th anniversary of King's assassination by passing the legislation.
Ostensibly, opposition in the House -- most of it among Republicans -- centered on the federal budget, and a view among fiscal hawks that the federal bureaucracy did not need another paid holiday. Although many Democrats (and some Republicans) suspected that less noble sentiments were at work, even those who did not ascribe racist views to the recalcitrant conservatives believed they were being insensitive to the meaning of the proposed new holiday.
"I never viewed it as an isolated piece of legislation to honor one man," Conyers told his colleagues. "Rather, I have always viewed it as an indication of the commitment of the House and the nation to the dream of Dr. King. When we pass this legislation, we should signal our commitment to the realization of full employment, world peace, and freedom for all."
His words, it turned out, were having an effect. In the early 1980s, Democrats were dismayed by the resistance to the bill among Republicans they believed should have known better. Among them: Jack Kemp, who loathed racism and who conveyed these sentiments in public and private; Dan Lungren, a Southern California conservative who clearly understood the important symbolism of Conyers' bill; and Newt Gingrich, a firebrand who was always talking about expanding his party's demographic reach.
Gradually, the limitations of their party's institutional objections to the proposed new holiday became apparent to these three, and others. Lungren was one of the first. After voting in committee against the holiday, he went home and told his wife that he thought he had done "the wrong thing." She advised him to rectify it.
Lungren shared his feelings with Kemp, who was having misgivings of his own. A native Californian, Kemp had played professional football for a dozen years, and formed lasting bonds with African American teammates that pre-dated -- and superseded -- politics. Kemp heard from these old friends, who were disappointed by his opposition to a bill honoring the nation's most iconic civil rights leader.
Lungren and Kemp discussed their change of heart with Gingrich, who suggested they go see Conyers. It was more than a courtesy call. These influential Republicans had decided to switch sides and they asked the Michigan Democrat how they could help him pass his bill. Conyers' advice was straightforward: Speak in favor of it on the House floor.
And so, on August 2, 1983, Jack Kemp, fiscal conservative and former NFL quarterback, stood in the well of the House and made an eloquent oration. "I have changed my position on this vote," he said, "because I really think that the American Revolution will not be complete until we commemorate the civil rights revolution and guarantee those basic declarations of human rights for all Americans and remove those barriers that stand in the way of people being what they were meant to be."
Kemp, like Lungren, made it a point that day to proclaim that King hadn't liberated black Americans, he'd liberated all Americans. Whites, because of the binding nature of their thinking, had been liberated most of all.
"I want my party to stand for that," said Kemp, who spoke without notes. "If we lose sight of the fact that the Republican Party was founded by Mr. Lincoln as a party of civil rights, freedom, and hope, and opportunity, and dreams, and a place where all people could be free -- if we turn our backs -- we are not going to the be the party of human dignity we want, as Republicans, to be known for."
The tide had been turned. House Speaker Tip O'Neill personally called for the vote and the legislation sailed through on a tally of 338-90. Now it was headed to the Senate, where one last drama had to play out.
In the upper chamber, the leadership in both parties were strongly behind the legislation.
"We owe this special recognition to black Americans who have suffered so much, contributed so much, and with whom we all can celebrate the continuing redemption of America's first and foremost promise of liberty and justice for all," Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker said on the Senate floor that day.
"In a very real sense, he was the second father of our country -- the prophet of America as one people, free and inseparable, black and white together," added Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who left the floor after speaking to sit in the Senate gallery with civil rights leaders and King's widow during the final vote.
Before it could take place, however, senators had to deal with desperate last-minute gambits by the bill's opponents, chiefly arch-conservative Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina. In the debate over the legislation, Helms had portrayed Martin Luther King as a communist sympathizer and unworthy recipient of such a high honor. Senate colleagues ranging from Kansas Republican Nancy Kassebaum to New Jersey Democrat Bill Bradley angrily denounced such attacks. But Helms tried to make things awkward for his colleagues by offering various amendments: to make the King holiday conditional on one for Thomas Jefferson; to establish a day honoring Hispanic Americans; and a third that would tie the bill to a "sense of the Senate" resolution calling on Reagan to pardon Marcus Garvey, who led a back-to-Africa movement in the early 1900s.
All these efforts were rejected overwhelmingly, as was one from New Hampshire Republican Gordon Humphrey to observe King's holiday on a Sunday and to make Abraham Lincoln's birthday a new federal holiday.
To independent observers at the time (all right, I'm referring to myself) it was as though a handful of Senate Republicans were trying sabotage their own leaders and undo the goodwill Jack Kemp and Dan Lungren had engendered in the House.
At the time, the Washington Post story on the Senate vote put it this way: "In a striking indication of how politics has shifted over the 20 years since southern Democrats led filibusters against civil rights legislation, only one southern Democrat, Sen. John C. Stennis of Mississippi, voted against the King bill."
The roll call vote was 78-22, with the third senator on the Democratic side voting "aye" that day being 40-year-old Joe Biden of Delaware.
Yesterday, President Biden preached a sermon in Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, from the very pulpit used by Martin Luther King Jr. and Martin Luther King Sr. -- and current Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock. That previous sentence itself shows how far we've come in the country, which Biden acknowledged. He also said this: "The battle for the soul of this nation is perennial. It's a constant struggle."
"At our best, the American promise wins out," the president added. "At our best, we hear and heed the injunctions of the Lord and the whispers of the angels."
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.