Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Observed

[crazychicknlady]

I was in college the first time I celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday.

The college in question did not celebrate government holidays. Most of the time we only noticed it was a holiday when we had to attend class, but it was a no mail day.

We only had a break over thanksgiving, Christmas and spring break. No veterans day, no presidents day, or any other. Those extra days were added to Christmas break so we could be off school during the coldest and snowiest time of the year.

Just the year before, Arizona chose not to adopt the holiday (they got so much flack they changed their mind the next year). The school I was attending was afraid of getting the same bad publicity as Arizona.

At the last minute they decided we would celebrate the day.

Let me lay this out for you:

We were scheduled to come back from winter break on the Monday that happened to be Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday observed. To make it possible for all of us to properly honor Mr. King we had to come back the Friday before, then have a three day weekend and continue with classes on Tuesday.

I lived out of state. My parents always bought my plane tickets months in advance to save money. I think we lucked out and had planned for me to arrive back at school on Thursday evening (so I'd have a long weekend to get ready for classes), so I was able to attend on Friday. Others weren't so lucky. And we still didn't celebrate any other government holidays that year.

The stupidity of that decision will probably live with me till the end of my days.

Comments

Well sort of

[rocketsong.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

What actually happened was the outgoing Governor declared it a holiday by executive order. This is of course an unconstitutional power grab, so the new governor rescinded the order and sent it down to the state legislature.

No how it was spun in the national media of course.