Officials in Three States Still Wrestling With Debate Over Holiday Honoring King

This state, one of three without a holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today, will instead have a legislative committee debate over a confusing array of bills on the subject.

One bill would establish an annual King Day on the third Monday in January and would eliminate a floating “Heritage Day,” which is celebrated in different ways in various parts of the state.

“King led and personified what I consider to be one of the three great domestic revolutions in American history,” said Democratic state Sen. Harry Fritz, a University of Montana history professor who introduced the King holiday bill on King’s true birthday, Jan. 15. “The American Revolution, the Civil War--these were completed in the civil rights movement.”

Freshman Republican state Sen. Jerry Noble of Great Falls--who opposed the bill on grounds that King “associated with a great many communists,” an argument common in these parts--introduced a bill to create a holiday honoring a Nez Perce Indian named Chief Joseph instead of King.

“The thinking is to recognize a racial minority in Montana, and that’s our minority,” Noble said.

Chief Joseph fled the U.S. cavalry and was hunted down in Montana in 1877. “I will fight no more forever,” he said in a memorable comment as he surrendered his tomahawk.

To Noble’s surprise, Montana’s three American Indian legislators hotly rejected his plan. Democratic state Rep. Angela Russell, a Crow Indian who was with King on his Alabama march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, when she was 21, said Noble was engaging in “diversionary tactics.”

“King was the power behind the whole civil rights movement in this country,” she said. “A holiday in his name would be a wonderful symbol and focus for the whole civil rights issue in Montana.”

Caught between choosing to honor the civil rights leader or a famous Indian, American Indian legislators offered a counterproposal.

“We chose both,” said Democratic state Sen. Bill Yellowtail, who represents the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations. An Indian-sponsored amendment would rename Noble’s proposed Chief Joseph holiday as “Native American Day,” replacing Columbus Day.

Yellowtail said Columbus “was a scoundrel, a raper and a pillager. Columbus Day has always been a sore point.”

Noble said he won’t take a stand on the amendments, pending a committee hearing today. “Apparently the Native Americans have a problem with Columbus,” Noble observed. “I was never aware of that.”

New Hampshire and Arizona are the other states where King Day is not celebrated, and both also face continuing controversy over the matter.

In New Hampshire, where a King Day bill is likely to come to a vote in February, supporters say a tradition of Yankee contrariness once again poses a potential obstacle.

“Our bill, which we introduce every two years, would replace Fast Day,” said the Rev. Barry Stoddard, a Unitarian minister and lobbyist for the New Hampshire Council of Churches. “This is a quirky old New Hampshire holiday which honors the time a pre-Revolutionary Colonial governor was very ill and asked the people to fast and pray for his recovery. The people fasted and prayed, and he died. That’s a paid state holiday.”

In Arizona, where King Day has been a long and costly subject of dispute resulting in the cancellation of major sports events and conventions, 20,000 people are expected to participate in an annual march on the state Capitol today. That’s double last year’s amount--spurred both by Arizona voters’ rejection last fall of a paid King holiday and reaction to the Persian Gulf War.

In all three states, new arguments about King’s pacifism are arising in response to war in the gulf. Holiday opponents accuse the civil rights leader of failing to support the soldiers in Vietnam. In Phoenix and possibly elsewhere, anti-war demonstrators are expected to swell the ranks of King holiday supporters.