Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Fifteen years later, President Ronald Reagan grudgingly signed the bill into law that created a federal holiday honoring Dr. King. What was the hold-up?

Opponents of the holiday claimed it was too damn expensive, even though Dr. King was an American hero who likely saved countless lives through his nonviolent activism. It was also considered inappropriate somehow to honor a private citizen this way. Yes, Dr. King never held elected office, but he spent most of his life working to overcome barriers preventing Black people from voting, so that was a somewhat petty distinction to make.

North Carolina Senators Jesse Helms and John Porter East were more upfront and racist with their opposition. Although Republicans today would swear on a stack of Atlas Shruggeds that Dr. King was a “true conservative," he was labeled a communist while alive. The FBI, under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, considered Dr. King an “enemy of the state" who palled around with communists.

Helms condemned Dr. King's opposition to the Vietnam War, which everyone by that point realized was a failure, and accused Dr. King of promoting “action-oriented Marxism" and “radical political views." Not coincidentally, Republicans smeared Senator-elect Raphael Warnock, the pastor at Dr. King's former Atlanta church, as a “radical liberal Marxist" during the Georgia Senate runoff campaign.