From the Birmingham Campaign to MLK Day

By Ecantados on January 20, 2015 • ( 1 )

Martin Luther King was the point man for a movement that resonated across the US at a time in US history when a whole sector of people were still abused by laws/people in US States. As such a Federal recognition of his efforts and others as a whole was designated in this day.

For those that try to negate his leadership that united hundreds of thousands in a movement to end this type of apartheid, be aware that you cannot change history or go backwards in time…as much as you would like to repeat it.

It is good that someone points out when Congressional Lawmakers take the right side of history as well as those that take the wrong side of history. No matter how those that take the wrong side try to justify what they did at the time.

In 1983, Congress voted overwhelmingly to approve legislation to honor the memory of the late Martin Luther King Jr. by observing a federal holiday on the third Monday of every January. But not every elected official was onboard with the effort.

Now the decades-old issue of who opposed making MLK Day a holiday has returned to the political scene, as one House Republican leader has faced scrutiny for his opposition to the day in conjunction with a larger controversy over race.

New House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana, came under fire last month for having voted twice against a state version of the holiday while serving in the local legislature. (The votes were unearthed as part of a larger story about a previously unreported speech Scalise delivered at a 2002 conference sponsored by a white-supremacist group.) Because many states took decades after the federal decision to implement MLK Day, Scalise’s votes against the holiday came late: He was one of six Louisiana statehouse members to vote against the holiday in 2004 and one of three to vote against it in 1999.

The negative and uninformed comments that followed the posting of the above article are worth rebuttal. The fact that they do not comprehend individual Civil Rights, the type of apartheid that was condoned at the time, the movement that became a national discussion and the Congressional people that voted not only against the Civil Rights Act but also the day to honor MLK is still affecting Americans.

The ACLU cases, starting with the Scopes Trial and with the addition of all the others with the 1st and 14th Amendments and finally the Civil Rights act should have been more than enough. Yet, there are those that see the Civil Rights movement as solely an African American movement when in effect the movement came to encompass all Americans.

We are not a colony of Europe, we are not Africa.

The comments that followed MLK articles range from inane to outright KKK type comments. All to seemingly negate the day yet ignoring the iconic personification of Martin Luther King in a movement that brought an equality for individuals from local to federal government.

Now, civil rights are known as Human Rights. Europe has finally gotten a better record. The US is still a work in progress.

Another issue is opportunities that falls within the general Human Rights category, as I’ve written previously, Henry Ford made the opportunity for people to buy a Model T and industrialized the automobile industry at the same time. Without someone to provide the opportunity so people can afford one and where they are, there are no opportunities to be had. It is the strength of any society.