{"id":7766,"date":"2026-01-19T22:37:28","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T22:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/?p=7766"},"modified":"2026-01-19T22:37:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T22:37:31","slug":"sanders-contextualizes-struggle-over-mlks-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/2026\/01\/19\/sanders-contextualizes-struggle-over-mlks-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Sanders Contextualizes Struggle Over MLK’s Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Dr. Crystal R. Sanders<\/a>, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently contributed analysis to the article: “Stevie Wonder\u2019s Battle for MLK Day and the New Challenges to King\u2019s Legacy<\/a>.” Sanders helps to chronicle the critical role that prominent figures like Wonder played in securing the establishment of the federal holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., which was signed into law in 1983. Sanders also offers fascinating analysis of the struggle to get the holiday observed on state and local levels, including in her hometown of Clayton, North Carolina (see more on this below). A specialist in the twentieth-century history of the U.S., Sanders is the author, most recently, of the multiple prize-winning book A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs<\/a><\/em> (UNC Press, 2024). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read an excerpt from the Capital B News <\/em>article below and find the full piece here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWhether we\u2019re talking about the local, state, or federal level, it took a lot of maneuvering to get this holiday,\u201d Sanders said.

She grew up in Clayton, a small North Carolina town about 15 or 20 minutes from Raleigh. She recalled how her father, the first Black American elected to the Clayton Town Council, basically had to trick the council into recognizing the holiday, even after North Carolina had adopted it as a state holiday in 1983.

\u201cAfter several failed attempts at getting the holiday recognized, my father introduced a motion that the town would observe all holidays observed by North Carolina,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd many of his colleagues didn\u2019t think twice. They voted in the affirmative. Later, during that same meeting, an elderly white man said, \u2018Wait, did I just vote for the King holiday?\u2019 And my father said, \u2018You most certainly did.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently contributed analysis to the article: “Stevie Wonder\u2019s Battle for MLK Day and the New Challenges to King\u2019s Legacy.” Sanders helps to chronicle the critical role that prominent figures like Wonder played in securing the establishment of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,16,17,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","hentry","category-faculty","category-public-humanities","category-public-scholarship","category-uncategorized","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7768,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7766\/revisions\/7768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}