MLK Day in Montana

This story is excerpted from the MT Lowdown, a weekly newsletter digest containing original reporting and analysis published every Friday.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the state and federal holiday commemorating the noted Civil Rights leader, will be celebrated this year on Monday, Jan. 15. While King was assassinated in 1968, the holiday that today provides a designated time to reflect on America’s complex history around race and civil rights wasn’t put on the books nationally until 1983, when a bill designating a federal holiday around King’s birthday was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. 

Montana didn’t follow suit until eight years later in 1991, when, as the Associated Press reported, a Montana bill signed by Gov. Stan Stephens left only three other states without some form of paid holiday honoring King.

According to minutes from a legislative committee where the bill, Senate Bill 78, was discussed that year, it replaced a “Heritage Day” holiday that had been enacted four years earlier. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Harry Fritz of Missoula, argued, as the minutes summarized, that the general-purpose cultural diversity holiday had “become a holiday of convenience and has never recognized anyone’s heritage.”

Proponents appearing in support of the bill included then-State Superintendent of Schools Nancy Keenan (a Democrat), then-Secretary of State Mike Cooney (a Democrat), a representative of then-Attorney General Marc Racicot (a future Republican governor), the Montana Association of Churches and several schoolchildren.

Supporter Bob Gervais, a state representative whose district included the Blackfeet Reservation, argued that the national Civil Rights Movement had been an inspiration for Native Americans. As the minutes summarize his words, he argued that the “movement taught the Indians that they have a right to live free from discrimination because of their race in employment, housing, voting rights [and] government services.”

Another supporter, then-Little Big Horn College President Janine Windy Boy, noted that it had only been a matter of years since a federal court found in a 1984 ruling that there was substantial evidence Big Horn County officials had discriminated against Native voters with practices she compared the treatment of Black voters in the American South. Among other findings in that case, the court concluded there was credible evidence that election officials had prevented Native residents from voting in general elections by striking their names from voting rolls after primary votes, and that officials had discouraged Native voter registration by limiting access to registration cards.

Opponents, of whom three testified at the hearing, argued against recognizing King in part because they believed he had associated with communists. The bill ultimately passed the Montana Senate, 39-11, and the Montana House, 64-36.

The full committee minutes are available here through the Montana Law Library.