What Happened to Washington's Birthday?

Who Stole George Washington’s Birthday?

            As a few local citizens celebrated Martin Luther King’s birthday here last month I had these thoughts about national holidays:

            For many years the nation celebrated George Washington’s birthday every February. Then one day George Washington’s birthday disappeared to be replaced by something called Presidents’ Day, as if all Presidents were equally entitled to a day.

Now the only national holiday celebrated in honor of a famous American is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. How come? Was King more important to America than George Washington or the framers of the Constitution? Who codified the free speech and assembly rights that King and the crowds at the Lincoln Memorial exercised during his famous 1963 “I have a dream” speech?

            What about important captains of industry like John D. Rockefeller, Ida Tarbell’s slanders notwithstanding, whose entrepreneurial skills produced an oil production and distribution system that has for more than a century fueled American prosperity, not to mention his philanthropic legacy that continues everywhere to this day? Then there’s Samuel Colt and Henry Ford; the economies of scale from interchangeable parts and mass production made it possible for Ford’s workers to buy the cars they were building. We also have market entrepreneurs like Commodore Vanderbilt and James T. Hill, and on and on. All these men contributed greatly to America’s economic progress, and without economic development there would have been no social advancement for anyone, minority or non-minority.

            What exactly did King do? Give him credit: he led the successful Montgomery bus boycott that ended the back of the bus humiliation; he developed a Gandhian non violent strategy of civil protest that served the country and the civil rights movement well for a time; and he delivered a very effective speech – the “I have a dream speech” – that aroused the conscience of many Americans. Even with all that it took the assassination of President Kennedy to motivate Congress to pass the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965.

            People forget that at the time of his death King had gone out of fashion with many in the civil rights movement. Stokely Carmichael’s “black power!” had become the civil rights rallying cry while Malcolm X had replaced King as a favorite leader. Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and other urban blacks made fun of King calling him “de lawd.” Carmichael further devalued the idea of non-violence, calling it a sometimes useful tactic but adding, “If some honky touches me, I’ll break his arm!”

            As with Lincoln and JFK, after King’s murder all the faults and controversies surrounding him disappeared to be replaced by almost universal adoration, the kind of deification that came to Lincoln and JFK after their violent deaths.

            As Washington, Madison, and the Captains of Industry have marched through history their faults have become known and then embellished by the multi-cultural blamers (who are compulsive America haters) while their contributions have been ignored. Those same blamers, however, will brook no criticism of King even though it’s indisputable that he consorted with communists, was a compulsive womanizer, and plagiarized his Boston University doctoral dissertation.

            King’s contributions were important but not the most important, as having a national holiday in his honor suggests. Bring back George Washington and let those who venerate King celebrate without a government sanctioned day off.