The 40 Year Battle For MLK Day [Some Sunday Context]
This Day (An America 250 History Show)
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.5 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 April 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For our "Sunday Context" episode, we look at the 40-year battle for honoring Martin Luther King, Jr with a federal holiday. Many states and notable politicians dragged their feed and manipulated the system to prevent giving King this honor, until Ronald Reagan finally proclaimed the new holiday.
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, Jody Avergan here. Welcome to our some Sunday context series where we are bringing you |
| 0:09.3 | conversations, new and from the archives, try and give you a little context for what we are up to here in |
| 0:15.0 | 26. Now, this past week, as you may have heard, we ran a two-parter on Martin Luther King Jr.'s |
| 0:20.8 | assassination in 1968, and today an episode from the archives about the fight over his legacy |
| 0:27.3 | that started basically on that day and lasted for 40 years when this country finally |
| 0:33.0 | introduced MLK Day as a proper federal holiday. So we trace why it took so long and also get into |
| 0:39.2 | a little bit of the reason that some federal holidays float around and find those random Mondays. |
| 0:43.5 | Kind of a fascinating tidbit. Before we run that, a quick reminder to sign up for our newsletter |
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| 0:53.1 | all sorts of extra newsletter content, |
| 0:55.5 | access to ad free early episodes, and bonus stuff like the full conversation with Ken Burns |
| 1:00.4 | that we had last week. Also, while I have you in my free time, I whipped up some new merch |
| 1:05.6 | just in time for the semi-Quincennial. So go ahead and get your This Day America 250 hats, mugs, shirts, |
| 1:12.6 | totes, all that stuff. Go to ThisDaypod.com. You will find a link to all of the things, |
| 1:17.7 | thisdaypod.com. Okay, after the break, why America dragged its feet on MLK Day for so long. |
| 1:33.5 | Okay. on MLK Day for so long. Hello and welcome to This Day in Esoteric Political History from Radiotopia. |
| 1:38.0 | My name is Jody Avergan. |
| 1:42.2 | This day, January 1986. It's the issuing of Proclamation 5-4-3-1 by the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. |
| 1:52.5 | The Proclamation reads, |
| 1:54.1 | This year marks the first observance of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a national holiday. |
| 1:59.7 | It is a time for rejoicing and reflecting. |
| 2:02.6 | And then it goes on and on and on as proclamations do. The day is, as you heard, hooked to MLK's |
... |
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