Five of the eight Jews in the Senate voted last week to establish a national holiday in January commemorating the birthday of the late Martin Luther King Jr. while the three others voted against it. The bill, which was adopted by the House previously, was passed by the Senate by a 78-22 vote.
Voting to honor the slain civil rights leader were Sens. Rudy Boschwitz (R. Minn.), Frank Lautenberg (D. NJ), Carl Levin (D. Mich.), Howard Metzenbaum (D. Ohio), and Arlen Specter (R. Penn.). Voting against the bill were Sens. Chic Hecht (R. Nev.), Warren Rudman (R. NH) and Edward Zorinsky (D. Neb.).
Levin and Metzenbaum took part in the debate just prior to the vote last Wednesday. “I am proud to have known Dr. King personally,” Metzenbaum said. “I was fortunate to have marched with him in Selma and I share the dream he so eloquently expressed.”
Levin rejected the argument that King should not be honored because he broke laws, noting that King advocated combating unjust laws through nonviolent civil disobedience. He quoted King’s April 16, 1963 letter from the Birmingham jail in which King said:
“We can never forget that everything Hitler did to Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal’. It was ‘illegal’ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
