Monday - January 19, 2009
MLK Day 2009
Martin Luther King Jr Day 2009 might be a bit overshadowed, or even usurped, by the Obampalooza going on right now. But it was the success of the former that opened the door for the latter to walk through all these years later. Although I rarely link to him any more, I’ll make an exception today. Michael Zak reminds us again that MLK was a Republican, and that it was Republicans who were behind the civil rights movement, while it was Democrats that were against it. Nearly 100 years before that, it was the Republican Party that was formed expressly to fight for freedom and equality, while it was the Democrat Party that was pro-slavery. It was those same Democrats who put Jim Crow laws into place post-war, and the grandsons of those same Democrats who kept segregation and the disdainful “separate but equal” laws in place. Keep that in mind today and tomorrow, because it is going to be a truth lost in the mist in DC. Oh, and today is a holiday because Ronald Reagan signed the bill. Not Jimmy Carter.
“The first Republican I knew was my father, and he is still the Republican I most admire. He joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I.”
Update: There is an opinion that this holiday was a sop; a bone thrown to the dogs. There may be a grain of truth in that, but I think it is worth remembering this man for what he accomplished. He did it with the help and sacrifice of a whole lot of other people, we know that too, but every movement needs it’s icon. And you’ll recall that this holiday cost us one presidential holiday. We used to have both Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthday; now we have President’s Day (which sort of seems like it could be applied to any President) and thus history is again lost in the fog. And I never really knew just how “official” this holiday was. My banks seem to be open, and when I worked in the corporate world those offices were open too. But all holidays seem less important than they used to. Remember how no stores, not even food stores, were open on Thanksgiving and Christmas? Or there would be one drug store, one grocery store, and 3 gas stations open per county on that day? Now everybody is open, always. Holidays are hardly more than a reason for stores to have sales these days. That’s a shame.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/19/2009 at 08:25 AM
Filed Under: • Racism and race relations •
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