MLK Didn’t Want a Holiday

He Wanted You To Vote

So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself, I cannot make up my mind — it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact — I can only submit to the edict of others. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King was a man of action. He cared little for material goods (as his wife, Coretta, often noted) and had little time for laughter, barbeque, or watching sports. Spending the MLK holiday shopping or taking in a game is fine.

But Dr. King would have preferred we honor him with the Vote.

LEGACY OF OPTIMISM

I was born into the age of American optimism, one Dr. King delivered to my people and the nation.

Millions of Americans from all walks of life marched on Washington, peacefully protesting for Jobs and Freedom. They heard King’s soaring voice proclaim his Dream–that “little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Little children like me.

Recognizing the power of his movement that looked to future generations by demanding America leave the worst of its past behind to rise to the principles of “Liberty and Justice for All,” President Kennedy welcomed Dr. King and other leaders of the March on Washington to the Oval Office in August 1963.

President John F. Kennedy meets with Rev. Martin Luther King, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, and others at the White House. Courtesy White House Historical Association.

By the end of that year, Kennedy lay dead, felled by an assassin's “single bullet.” The country reeled amidst conspiracy theories about who had killed the young president, protests over civil rights and the escalating war in Vietnam, and the Sunday bombing of a church in Birmingham that killed four little girls. Dr. King had one Dream for America. The Ku Klux Klan had quite another: a nightmare of violence, subjugation, and perennial denial of our civil rights.

Dr. King’s hope for a better America rang through the despair.

“They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity,” Dr. King eulogized the four girls killed at the 16th Street Baptist church. This was a crusade. A struggle. The sacrifices were great, but the prize was freedom.

I was born one year later. And Dr. King was proved right. From the unwitting sacrifice of these children came tremendous progress.

Amid continuing national atrocities and in the wake of Kennedy’s assassination, Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, signed a Civil Rights Act to guarantee equal treatment of every American regardless of race. The year was 1964.

WITH THE VOTE

But it wasn’t enough. Dr. King and his allies could see the real power lay with the Vote.

With the Vote, Black people could sit on juries and school boards. With the Vote, they could elect the sheriff and local prosecutor. With the Vote, Black people could send representatives to their statehouses and even to Congress.

White supremacists knew it, too. Dr. King’s vision became dangerous in the very power it threatened to give to African Americans.

King pressed on. He was repeatedly arrested; he wrote a letter from a Birmingham jail that became a clarion call for justice; he marched on Selma; he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Martin and Coretta King march in the rain across the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1955. CREDIT: Bob Adelman, who served as a volunteer photographer, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNNC).

King pushed for a Voting Rights Act using his moral and political gravitas.

For a century, the Fifteenth Amendment had proclaimed,

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

But even the U.S. Constitution could not overcome pervasive racial discrimination in voting registration. With pressure from LBJ, Congress finally recognized what Dr. King knew. Federal action was necessary to protect African American voting rights. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in August of 1965.

King called the day “a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield.” But no one knew better than MLK that the fight was far from over.

Today, we honor Dr. King’s birthday and legacy on the same day we are inaugurate a new president.

YET OUR VOTING RIGHTS ARE UNDER SIEGE.

At least 40 states passed new voting laws before the 2024 election (according to the Brennan Center, which tracks voting laws nationwide).
At least 14 states have made it harder to vote, especially for people of color, young voters, people with disabilities, and other traditionally disenfranchised communities.

This is no different from when Dr. King fought for our right to vote. The people behind these laws are betting against us. Their cynicism dares to take on Dr. King’s optimism. They do not have the public support they need to win, so they circumvent the process, twisting the laws to their benefit. They manipulate the system just enough to win at the margins of democracy. It’s a power grab.

DON’T X. VOTE

Before his assassination in 1968, Dr. King commended the Fifteenth Amendment, the Voting Rights Act, and the many cases litigated by Thurgood Marshall and the Legal Defense Fund that made great strides “in removing all of the remaining obstacles to the right to vote.”

Still, he warned that the ballot can only be an effective tool for social change if voters use it.

Had he been asked, Martin Luther King would likely have said he would rather Election Day be a national holiday than his birthday.

But here we are with the day off.

So let’s honor MLK’s memory with more than a post on X or Instagram. Or a visit to a shop. Or time spent watching a game.

Let’s honor Dr. King by registering to vote. And turning out the next time an election rolls around.