[ti:MLK Day: The Fight for a Holiday to Celebrate Peace]
[by:www.21voa.com]
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[00:00.16]In 1968, American civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr.
[00:07.68]was shot and killed outside his motel room.
[00:12.52]Four days later, a congressman proposed a federal holiday honoring King.
[00:22.88]It was to be a holiday celebrating peace.
[00:27.48]Who could object to such a proposal?
[00:32.24]Many people, it turned out.
[00:36.12]The struggle to approve Martin Luther King Day took more than 15 years.
[00:44.24]And it ended with a very unlikely lawmaker: Ronald Reagan,
[00:52.00]one of America's most conservative presidents.
[00:56.56]In King's famous 1963 speech in Washington, D.C.,
[01:03.92]he described his dream for racial unity in the United States.
[01:10.40]In one line, King said he hoped "little black boys and black girls
[01:18.12]will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."
[01:27.76]The speech helped create King's public image as a seeker of justice and equality.
[01:37.48]He based the movement on non-violent resistance, leading large peaceful protests.
[01:47.72]Among other things, King's activism helped end laws
[01:55.09]that separated black and white Americans.
[01:59.92]But people who objected to King's message – or to King himself
[02:07.20]–called him a troublemaker, communist and racist.
[02:13.60]For years after his death, most lawmakers would not consider a proposed bill
[02:22.24]to make King's birthday a federal holiday.
[02:27.16]Finally, in 1979, after ten years of petitions from millions of citizens,
[02:37.72]lawmakers discussed the idea of a King holiday in an official hearing.
[02:47.36]Author David Chappell writes about some of the objections in his book "Waking from the Dream."
[02:57.16]Chappell reports that one opponent said King used peaceful protests
[03:05.24]to make others so angry they had to react violently.
[03:11.32]Another claimed communist groups were often asked to raise money for King.
[03:21.76]A third asserted that King wanted government programs to support blacks over whites.
[03:32.40]And many opponents questioned whether King deserved the same respect as George Washington,
[03:42.16]the nation's first president who is honored with a federal holiday.
[03:49.44]The bill did not pass.
[03:54.00]Some lawmakers proposed alternative ideas.
[04:00.44]How about a statue of King in the Capitol building?
[04:05.04]While the Capitol included more than 600 works of art at the end of the 1970s,
[04:14.48]only two featured black Americans.
[04:19.20]Others suggested a day somewhat less than a federal holiday.
[04:27.32]Why not a "commemoration" of King's birthday on the third Sunday of January?
[04:34.92]A more informal Sunday commemoration cost less than
[04:41.08]giving federal workers a paid weekday off, they said.
[04:46.76]King holiday supporters agreed to a statue of King in the Capitol.
[04:54.64]But they insisted that the civil rights leader also deserved the full respect of a national holiday.
[05:06.04]One supporter, musician Steven Wonder, even released a hit song
[05:13.24]celebrating King's work and criticizing those who opposed a holiday.
[05:19.68]The song was called "Happy Birthday."
[05:26.00]Two years later, Wonder – along with King's widow, Coretta Scott King
[05:33.24]– presented Congress with the signatures of more than 6 million people supporting the King Holiday.
[05:42.56]In 1983, the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate
[05:49.84]officially discussed the King holiday again.
[05:54.32]The timing was surprising because conservative Republican Party candidate
[06:02.92]Ronald Reagan had recently been elected president.
[06:08.52]His party also controlled the Senate.
[06:13.84]Reagan had said publicly he did not support the King holiday proposal.
[06:21.76]In addition, the U.S. economy was struggling.
[06:29.12]Lawmakers were reluctant to agree to the cost of another holiday.
[06:36.52]But American culture had also changed.
[06:41.60]Author David Chappell says that in the early 1980s,
[06:47.92]the arguments against King were not as effective as they once were.
[06:55.32]Many voters no longer responded positively
[06:59.48]to opponents' charges that King incited violence,
[07:04.40]was linked to communists, or supported racial division.
[07:09.60]Even some conservative lawmakers
[07:13.88]– especially those with large African-American populations in their districts
[07:20.00]– had slowly changed their position on the issue.
[07:26.28]By the end of that year, the bill establishing the King holiday
[07:31.80]passed both the House and the Senate.
[07:35.72]It went to the president to sign.
[07:40.92]Earlier in his career, Reagan had praised King.
[07:45.84]In the 1960s, the future president had called King "a great leader and teacher."
[07:55.72]Reagan had said King symbolized "courage, sacrifice, and the tireless pursuit of justice."
[08:05.52]Two years into his presidency, Reagan's respect for King seemed to have returned.
[08:13.64]In January of 1983, Reagan noted that he and King did not share political philosophies.
[08:24.84]But, Reagan said, the two men shared "a deep belief in freedom and justice under God."
[08:36.40]Several months later, Reagan communicated his support for a day honoring King
[08:44.08]—although, he did not say exactly why he changed his mind.
[08:50.96]On November 2, 1983, Ronald Reagan signed the legislation
[08:59.48]establishing the third Monday of every January as the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday.
[09:09.32]Even though the holiday rarely falls on King's actual birthday—January 15
[09:18.60]—it permits public school students and federal workers a three-day weekend to relax,
[09:27.48]spend time with loved ones, or perform community service.
[09:35.24]As the bill described, the federal government began celebrating the holiday in 1986.
[09:44.32]Most states extended the holiday to other workers and students.
[09:52.28]But several states declined to dedicate the day only to King.
[09:59.24]New Hampshire combined it with Civil Rights Day.
[10:04.32]Utah and Idaho combined it with Human Rights Day.
[10:10.64]Arizona chose not to recognize the day at all,
[10:17.80]until tourists boycotted the state
[10:21.64]and the National Football League refused to play the Super Bowl there.
[10:28.88]And some Southern states honored American Civil War generals alongside King.
[10:36.72]The birthday of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general
[10:43.16]who fought for states' rights to maintain African-American slavery, is January 19.
[10:52.48]Lee's cause lost in the Civil War, but some states remember him with a holiday.
[11:03.36]One of them, Virginia, celebrated General Lee,
[11:08.96]fellow Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
[11:16.56]all on the same occasion: Lee-Jackson-King Day.
[11:23.92]In 2000, the Virginia governor succeeded in separating the events.
[11:31.56]The Confederate generals are remembered on a Friday.
[11:36.32]King is honored three days later.
[11:40.88]I'm Marsha James.
[11:43.52]And I'm Rick Hindman.
END OF TRACK. "END OF TRACK." The two men bowed. "Whoever was that person you were talking to?" she enquired, as soon as they stood together. The took of triumph faded from her eyes, she had grown worn and weary. The roses were wilting on the walls, the lights were mostly down now. Hetty, looking in to see if anything was wanted, found herself driven away almost fiercely. I only saw Master Jervie once when he called at tea time, The year 1747 was opened by measures of restriction. The House of Lords, offended at the publication of the proceedings of the trial of Lord Lovat, summoned the parties to their bar, committed them to prison, and refused to liberate them till they had pledged themselves not to repeat the offence, and had paid very heavy fees. The consequence of this was that the transactions of the Peers were almost entirely suppressed for nearly thirty years from this time, and we draw our knowledge of them chiefly from notes taken by Horace Walpole and Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. What is still more remarkable, the reports of the House of Commons, being taken by stealth, and on the merest sufferance, are of the most meagre kind, sometimes altogether wanting, and the speeches are given uniformly under fictitious names; for to have attributed to Pitt or Pelham their[112] speeches by name would have brought down on the printers the summary vengeance of the House. Many of the members complained bitterly of this breach of the privileges of Parliament, and of "being put into print by low fellows"; but Pelham had the sense to tolerate them, saying, "Let them alone; they make better speeches for us than we can make for ourselves." Altogether, the House of Commons exhibited the most deplorable aspect that can be conceived. The Ministry had pursued Walpole's system of buying up opponents by place, or pension, or secret service money, till there was no life left in the House. Ministers passed their measures without troubling themselves to say much in their behalf; and the opposition dwindled to Sir John Hinde Cotton, now dismissed from office, and a feeble remnant of Jacobites raised but miserable resistance. In vain the Prince of Wales and the secret instigations of Bolingbroke and Doddington stimulated the spirit of discontent; both Houses had degenerated into most silent and insignificant arenas of very commonplace business. "It certainly will be. Miss Widgeon," answered Maria, with strictly "company manners." "One who has never had a brother exposed to the constant dangers of army life can hardly understand how glad we all feel to have Si snatched from the very jaws of death and brung back to us." "Just plug at 'em as you would at a crow, and then go on your way whistlin'?" persisted Harry. "Hurroo!" echoed Hennessey; "that's the ticket." "Come forward, keeper," continued the baron, "and state how these arrows came into your hands!" "Yes." HoMEJULIA京香2018下载
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