Martin Luther King was in every sense a visionary – dreaming of a post-racial world for decades before any significant steps were ever taken in that direction. Even an honor to his work got caught up in the racial politics of the age. A few days after his assassination, a bill was introduced in the Senate to commemorate King with a national holiday. It was defeated. A year later it got introduced again, by the same senator, John Conyers, and was defeated again. Over the ensuing decade more than 30 bills for commemoration of Martin Luther King came up to be turned down — and then the President of the United States got involved.

On this day, January 14, 1979, President Jimmy Carter called on Congress to designate Martin Luther King Day a national holiday. He followed up several weeks later with a supplement to his State of the Union Address stating King “led this Nation’s effort to provide all its citizens with civil rights and equal opportunity,” and for that Carter “strongly supported” his commemoration in a national holiday.

Remarkably, it took several more years of hearings, procedural maneuvers and acrimonious debates before the bill finally passed. Opponents of the bill argued about the costs to the government, about King’s alleged ties to communists, and about his alleged illicit affairs. Fifteen years after King’s death and the first proposal for a holiday in his memory, legislation to that end was signed by President Reagan.