Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1971, when the
organization presented Congress with three million
signatures supporting the establishment of a na-
tional holiday in King’s honor. Civil rights activists
continued to campaign for a King holiday through-
out the 1970’s. Movement toward a King holiday
progressed at the state level as well when, in 1973, Il-
linois became the first state to enact a King holiday
law. Massachusetts and Connecticut enacted similar
laws the following year, while a 1975 New Jersey State
Supreme Court decision ruled that the state provide
a paid holiday for state employees in honor of King.
By the late 1970’s, pressure on Congress to cre-
ate a federal holiday intensified, with organized
marches held in Washington, D.C., as well as lobby-
ing by the King Center. President Jimmy Carter
called on Congress to pass King holiday legislation
in 1979, and King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, testi-
fied before joint hearings of Congress in support of
the legislation. In 1980, Stevie Wonder released a hit
song called “Happy Birthday” that celebrated King
and promoted the King holiday movement. Two
years later, Wonder and other activists presented
more than six million signatures in support of a na-
tional holiday to Tip O’Neill of Massachusetts, the
Democratic Speaker of the House of Representa-
tives, in an effort to push for legislative action.
The King holiday bill, which proposed designat-
ing the third Monday of every January as a celebra-
tion of King’s January 15 birthday, passed the House
of Representatives on a bipartisan vote of 338 to 90
in August, 1983. In October of that year, Democratic
senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts sponsored a
corresponding bill in the Senate, which, after a vig-
orous debate, passed by a vote of 78 to 22. Republi-
can senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina opposed
the legislation and had sought unsuccessfully to gen-
erate opposition to the proposed holiday by de-
nouncing King’s anti-Vietnam War stance and by
insisting that King had maintained communist con-
nections. Despite his own misgivings, President Ron-
ald Reagan signed the King holiday bill into law on
November 3, 1983, establishing the third Monday of
every January starting in 1986 as the Martin Luther
King, Jr., National Holiday.
Impact Several states, notably New Hampshire, Ar-
izona, and Utah, resisted enacting corresponding
King holidays for state employees and institutions.
However, public pressure eventually resulted in all
fifty states officially observing Martin Luther King
Day. After Congress passed the King Holiday and
Service Act in 1994, Martin Luther King Day was ad-
ditionally designated as a national day of volunteer
service for Americans.Further Reading
Dyson, Michael Eric.I May Not Get There with You: The
True Martin Luther King, Jr.New York: The Free
Press, 2000.
Hanson, Drew D.The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr.,
and the Speech That Inspired a Nation. New York:
Ecco, 2003.
Brooke Speer OrrSee also Affirmative action; African Americans;
Conservatism in U.S. politics; Liberalism in U.S. pol-
itics; Racial discrimination; Reagan, Ronald.MAS*Hseries finale
The Event The last episode of a long-running
dramatic comedy is aired
Date February 28, 1983The finale ofM*A*S*Hwas seen by over 100 million view-
ers, making it the most-watched television episode in U.S.
histor y.M*A*S*Hfollowed the exploits of the staff of the
4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M*A*S*H),
a fictional unit stationed near the front lines of
the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. Produced by
Twentieth Century-Fox, the thirty-minute weekly se-
ries premiered September 17, 1972.M*A*S*Hwas
based in part on a 1968 novel by Richard Hooker (a
pseudonym of former Army doctor H. Richard
Hornberger) but more directly on Robert Altman’s
1970 motion picture adaptation of the novel. Like
the film, the initial series coincided with the growing
unpopularity of the Vietnam War among Ameri-
cans, and its Korean setting was interpreted by many
as a stand-in for Vietnam.
Four original cast members remained with the se-
ries for its entire eleven-year run: Alan Alda as chief
surgeon Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye”
Pierce; William Christopher as Chaplain Francis John
Patrick Mulcahy; Loretta Swit as head nurse Major
Margaret Houlihan; and Jamie Farr as company
clerk Maxwell Q. Klinger. The ensemble decided to626 MAS*Hseries finale The Eighties in America