The 40 Year Battle For MLK Day [Some Sunday Context]

About this episode

This episode explores the 40-year struggle to establish Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a federal holiday in the United States.

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. Join our America250 newsletter community ! Subscribe for free to get the latest news and analysis of how America250 is playing out. Paying subscribers get access to early, ad-free versions of the show. Plus bonus features throughout the year. To support our work and get access to everything, subscribe now . This Day is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Your support helps foster independent, artist-owned podcasts and award-winning stories. If you want to support the show directly, you can do so on our website: ThisDayPod.com Get in touch if you have any ideas for future topics, or just want to say hello. Follow us on social @thisdaypod Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

People in this episode

Host: Jody Avirgan

Topics covered

• MLK Day
• federal holiday
• civil rights
• political history
• Ronald Reagan
• honoring Martin Luther King, Jr

Keywords

• MLK Day
• federal holiday
• Ronald Reagan
• civil rights
• political history
• honoring Martin Luther King, Jr

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Radiotopia, PRX, This Day

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