But not without rancor
All 100 Senators were present for the vote. Vice President George Bush made one of his extremely rare appearances to preside, though there was not the remotest chance he would have to break a tie. Rather, the upper chamber was acting with all possible solemnity to confer an honor previously granted to only one American citizen, George Washington. As the honoree’s widow watched proudly from the gallery, the Senate voted 78 to 22 to establish the third Monday of January, beginning in 1986, as a national holiday commemorating the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The high moment could not, however, erase the memory of a squalid scene the day before. New Right Republican Jesse Helms of North Carolina had resurrected the old smear that King was a Communist sympathizer, setting off a shouting tumult in which other legislators broke Senate rules to impugn Helms’ motives. Then, only hours after the Senate vote had seemingly put an end to the controversy, Ronald Reagan needlessly started it anew. At his Wednesday night news conference, the President defended Helms’ “sincerity” even as he pledged to sign the holiday bill. Leading Democrats quickly demanded that Reagan disavow Helms. The notes of rancor were doubly distressing because the new holiday is intended to symbolize the commitment of all Americans to racial equality. Bills to establish King’s birthday (which actually is Jan. 15) as a national holiday had been introduced in every session of Congress since the charismatic minister was assassinated in 1968, and just as regularly sidetracked. Opponents questioned whether King or anyone else should be granted an honor never conferred on Lincoln or Jefferson. But blacks have been registering to vote in numbers that hardly any politician can continue to ignore, and the holiday had become an issue of enormous symbolic significance. In August the House voted for the idea, 338 to 90.
Senate action was held up when Helms threatened a filibuster. Then he sued in federal court to open the “raw files” of an FBI investigation of King (partly conducted by means of wiretaps) that had been sealed until the year 2027. Though Helms claimed he wanted to know what the tapes might say about King’s association with Communism, Helms’ critics suspected that he was most interested in what the FBI had learned about King’s active private life; the late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who hated King, had planted many of his bugs under hotel beds. After the court denied his motion, Helms resumed the attack on the Senate floor.
Helms complained, accurately, that the bill had been rushed to the floor without committee hearings. He also grumbled about the cost, which he grandiosely put at $12 billion. The actual cost of a tenth national holiday* is difficult to calculate. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the Federal Government would have to pay a mere $18 million in premium wages for employees who are called in to work. Some estimates put the price tag for state and local governments at $692 million and for private businesses at $4.3 billion; those figures assume they all close for the day, which they are not legally obligated to do.
Helms’ principal argument was an ugly echo of the McCarthy era. “There is no evidence that Martin Luther King was a member of the Communist Party,” said Helms, but his associations “strongly suggest that King harbored a strong sympathy for the Communist Party and its goals.” Helms recalled that Robert Kennedy, during the Administration of his older brother, had authorized FBI wiretaps on King, and Helms told Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts that the Senator’s “argument is with his dead brother who was President and his dead brother who was Attorney General.”
Face red with fury, Kennedy shouted: “I am appalled at this attempt to misappropriate the memory of my brother[s] . . . If Robert Kennedy were alive today, he would be the first person to say that Hoover’s reckless campaign against Martin Luther King was a shame and a blot on American history.”
New York Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan theatrically slammed to the floor a packet of materials assembled by Helms, proclaiming it “filth.” New Jersey Democrat Bill Bradley voiced openly a common suspicion that Helms was trying to inflame racial antagonism in order to win white votes in his re-election campaign next year. Helms, said the normally mild-mannered Bradley, “is playing up to old Jim Crow and all of us know it.”
But Reagan, asked at his news conference if he agreed that King had Communist sympathies, replied with inexcusable flippancy (and mathematical inaccuracy):
“We’ll know in about 35 years, won’t we?”
He added that “I don’t fault Senator Helms’ sincerity with regard to wanting the records opened up.” And while he praised King’s “accomplishments” in combatting “a discrimination that was pretty foreign to what is normal with us,” he said he would have preferred a day of remembrance to the holiday.
Reagan later telephoned King’s widow Coretta to apologize for remarks that he said had been a “mistake.” At the same time, however, the White House confirmed an exchange of letters between Reagan and former Republican Governor Meldrim Thomson of New Hampshire. Thomson said a holiday for King would honor a man “of immoral character whose frequent associations with leading agents of Communism is well established.” Reagan wrote back that “I have the same reservations you have, but here the perception of too many people is based on image, not reality.”
The best possible interpretation — and it is not very good — is that Reagan was trying simultaneously to mollify his right-wing supporters and reassure black and white proponents of equal rights that he is sympathetic to their concerns.
If so, he blew it badly with both. He wound up with a stand that the far right found mushy and blacks considered offensive .
— By George J. Church. Reported by Neil MacNeil/Washington
* The existing nine are New Year’s Day, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
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