DAN QUAGLIANA
Managing Editor
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Photo via Pixabay.com
On Nov. 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed H.R. 3706 into law.
On July 29 of that year, Representative Katie Hall (D-IN) introduced that bill in order to recognize the third Monday in January “as a day of prayer in [Martin Luther] King’s memory.”
But this wasn’t the first attempt to create a holiday in King’s honor. Every year from 1968 to 1983, Representative John Conyers (D-MI) introduced legislation to do just that, but it languished every year in the lower chamber of Congress.
After finally passing the House, Hall’s bill almost died in the Senate, where North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms released a 400-page FBI report smearing King as a communist. New York Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan threw the report to the Senate floor, calling it “filth.”
On Oct. 19, 1983, the Senate voted 78 to 22 on the bill, leading it to President Reagan’s desk.
Throughout his life, King devoted all his efforts to advancing civil rights across the country. He organized the 1963 Birmingham Protests, two of the Selma to Montgomery marches and gave the famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
It is heavily, heavily ironic that on MLK Day in 2025, Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term as president of the United States.
Ironic not because Trump seemingly devoted his entire first term to walking back many of the rights and protections that King fought for.
Ironic not because during the first week of his second term, he signed an executive order eliminating all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
It is most ironic because that is what the American people voted for. Not once, but twice.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump said, “Every institution in America is under attack from this Marxist concept of ‘equity.’ I will get this extremism out of the White House, out of the military, out of the Justice Department and out of our government.”
Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign spokesperson and current White House Chief of Staff, also stated during the campaign that, “President Trump is committed to weeding out discriminatory programs and racist ideology across the federal government.”
Martin Luther King was killed trying to stamp out this type of rhetoric from the United States. Hearing this come out of the president’s office is disgusting and morally reprehensible.
It is true that King’s politics were substantially to the left of not only the Republican Party, but the current-day Democratic Party as well. In a 1952 letter to his wife, Coretta Scott King, he said, “I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic.”
He also said in a speech that “something is wrong with capitalism” and, “There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”
Even if you disagree with his more socialist sentiments, King brought civil rights to an unparalleled level for his time, to a level that, without him, might not have been reached even today.
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter posthumously awarded King the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award that the president can bestow upon an American civilian. In his speech, Carter said, “Martin Luther King Jr. was the conscience of his generation. He gazed upon the great wall of segregation and saw that the power of love could bring it down. From the pain and exhaustion of his fight to fulfill the promises of our founding fathers for our humblest citizens, he wrung his eloquent statement of his dream for America. He made our nation stronger because he made it better. His dream sustains us yet.”
Compare those words to those that Trump has spoken about race.
In the 1970s, the government sued Trump, then a private citizen, for allegedly discriminating against Black apartment seekers.
He was also one of the earliest supporters of the “birther” theory that President Barack Obama, the country’s first and so far only Black president, was not born in the United States, but rather in Kenya. In 2012, Trump wrote on Twitter, “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama’s birth certificate is a fraud.” In 2016, he said on CNN, “I mean, I have my own theory on Obama. Someday I’ll write a book.”
In his 2024 campaign, according to Axios, Trump’s administration would “push to eliminate or upend programs in government and corporate America that are designed to counter racism that has favored whites.” Trump also said that there is a “definite anti-white feeling in the country.”
And, of course, he signed an executive order eliminating DEI programs in the federal government, which his administration claims violate the Constitution by adhering to preferences based on race, gender and sexual orientation.
According to AP News, “Trump officials said it’s fitting the order is being delivered on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as it aims to return to the idea that one day all Americans can be treated on the basis of their character and not by the color of their skin.”
In his second inauguration speech, Trump said, “We will strive together to make his dream a reality. We will make his dream come true … We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based.”
Maya Wiley, the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said that, “Dr. King had a dream, and this is his nightmare: the rollback of the work of our civil and human rights coalition over the past 75 years.”
DEI programs were originally created in order to create fair, competitive environments in workplaces and schools. Following Trump’s executive order, many private companies, such as Meta, Walmart and Target, have also eliminated their DEI hiring initiatives.