Without a doubt early stages of althiemers were affecting the thought process of President Reagan when he made MLK’s birthday a federal holiday. He had previously said many times that there were a lot of great Americans that didn’t have their own holiday and he didn’t see any reason why King should be given one. The great senator Jesse Helms refused to go along with the ruse and said if King was such a great man why were his FBI files sealed for the next 50 years. Helms said King was a communist, trouble-maker and philanderer and that is exactly what the FBI records would reveal if opened. To me it is a national disgrace that we only have one federal holiday for a president and that being George Washington, but King now has this honor. One thing is certain if Jesse Helms had been president no way in hell King would have a federal holiday in his honor.
Very well put. I too am old enough to remember what was being said about the so called Saint Martin Luther King back when he was alive. He was a communist, a serial adulterer, and anti-American sympathizer.
The merits of he Vietnam War can be argued forever, but still we were putting young American lives in harms way. To me it is still an incredible irony that we have a holiday named after someone who actually should be in prison for a lifetime for treason.