Recalling Arizona's struggle for MLK holiday

More than two decades ago, Arizona struggled with whether to declare Martin Luther King Jr. Day a state holiday.

The fight, bitter and divisive, tore at lawmakers, voters and civic leaders for six years.

As the state struggled, the Rev. Warren H. Stewart emerged as a community leader, urging voters to support a King holiday as a symbol of equality.

Opponents "said Martin Luther King Jr. was not worthy of a holiday. And that caused a firestorm," Stewart said on a recent afternoon, recalling the pro-holiday campaign. "That was like an insult for people who believed in all that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had done."

Stewart remembers that during the political journey, he was offered a helping hand -- a way to win the holiday he supported. But first, he would have to face a battle with his own conscience.

The first national King holiday was observed in 1986 by a decision of President Ronald Reagan. That same year, Gov. Bruce Babbitt decided the same for Arizona.

When Gov. Evan Mecham succeeded Babbitt in 1987, however, he rescinded Babbitt's decision, saying that Babbitt, as governor, did not have the authority to single-handedly declare a paid state holiday.

So began the campaign among local civil-rights advocates for voter enactment of a paid state holiday.

For proponents of the holiday, the fight was about ideology and symbolism, a day to celebrate a man who, they believed, had lived and died for justice. They wanted to live out King's dream, as articulated in his famous 1963 speech, in their home state. The vision: racial, social, political and economic equality for all.

But there were plenty of opponents.

Mecham insisted he was acting on legal advice about the powers of the Governor's Office. The Arizona House and Senate could not agree on the matter.

Stewart said there was a racial divide: "The Legislature, they saw Martin Luther King as a Black hero and also as an agitator. African-Americans were only 3 percent of the population of the state of Arizona."

The question would be left to the people of Arizona.

In 1990, voters went to the polls. They considered two ballot propositions that would have created a paid state holiday. On one, the vote was close. But in the end, both failed.

Stewart, pastor of a prominent African-American congregation in Phoenix, had become the face of the pro-King Day movement, bringing various minority and community groups together for the cause.

After the failed 1990 votes, he believed he had exhausted all options.

Some supporters urged Stewart to try to get the matter on the statewide ballot for the 1992 general election. But he had grown weary. The campaign lacked traction among Arizona residents, and it would take tireless work to get lawmakers to approve a referendum.

"I said, 'No, let's move on to other stuff,' " Stewart recalled during a recent interview in his office at First Institutional Baptist Church near 13th and Jefferson streets.

Years of political fighting over the holiday had created an image of Arizona nationally as a state locked in a racial battle. Several big-name musicians and national conventions had canceled their Arizona events.

But the cancellation that really panicked Phoenix-area business interests came from the National Football League.

The NFL had already cautioned that if a holiday was not approved, it would consider relocating the 1993 Super Bowl planned for Sun Devil Stadium. The league wanted to avoid the racial controversy. After the ballot measures failed, the league followed through, moving the game to Pasadena, Calif.

Arizona's tourism industry worried about long-term economic losses.

Business leaders offered full financial support to pro-King holiday forces to ask voters again to approve a holiday in the 1992 election.

Stewart knew that with more money and a united front, the campaign stood a chance in 1992. But he had refused to work with business leaders in the 1990 campaign, he said, because he felt that they were motivated only by economic gain.

Facing the business community's renewed offer, Stewart would have to come to terms with what he perceived as a difference in motivations.

"I had to go through a transformation," Stewart said. "I had a problem of 'Can we accept the business community to finance this?' "

Stewart first sought guidance through prayer. Then, he sought direction from a mentor, the civil-rights leader and anti-apartheid activist Leon Howard Sullivan.

"I went to him in his home in Scottsdale, and I said, 'Dr. Sullivan, I got a problem,' " Stewart recalled. "I said, 'The same people who only wanted the holiday to get the Super Bowl want to be a part of our coalition now, and I have a problem that they don't want it for the right reasons.'

"Here's what he said: 'Warren, the corporate executives need people like yourself to prick their consciences because their social veneer is very thin....' He also said, 'Take the money that they give you to finance the campaign because what they give you is only a drop in the bucket of what they have.' "

Stewart formed Victory Together, uniting various groups of supporters under a single banner. The group toned down the political rhetoric and instead focused on increasing voter education and registration.

By September 1992, Victory Together had spent $500,000 promoting the ballot proposition with the help of a national political-consulting firm, while opponents spent about $2,300, according to state records cited in The Arizona Republic archives. In the process, Victory Together registered 75,000 new voters.

Voters approved a state King holiday in November 1992, making Arizona the only state that put it to a vote of the people and saw it pass.

"It was historic and it was phenomenal," Stewart said.

"Obviously, we needed White people to vote for the holiday," he said, because Whites were the majority of the population. "Our educational campaign stayed focused on 'Martin King helped this nation to fulfill the basic tenets of the Constitution, the Preamble, the Pledge of Allegiance.' They finally got it."

Voter approval meant, Stewart said, that the majority of Arizonans understood that "this isn't just about a Black man or Black people. This is about America. This shows America at our best when it comes to civil rights, how we changed as a result of Martin Luther King Jr."

On the first state King holiday, in January 1993, about 19,000 Arizonans celebrated, along with leading civil-rights activist and King contemporary Rosa Parks and musician Stevie Wonder, Stewart said.

The NFL scheduled the 1996 Super Bowl for Sun Devil Stadium.

But following the 1992 election, Stewart also delivered a speech with a warning.

The holiday in honor of King was a good symbol, he said, but it was only a symbol. The work had only just begun, and Arizona would have to move "from symbol to substance" and apply equal treatment to all races and ethnicities.

Twenty years later, Stewart said that still is not a reality.

The controversy of the past two years surrounding Senate Bill 1070, Arizona's immigration law, was a deja vu of sorts for Stewart.

"We thought that battle was over," Stewart said. "The immigration fight is substance. ... To me, the boycott over SB 1070 was much more important than a boycott over the holiday because the holiday was a symbol. And SB 1070 was contrary to everything Martin Luther King lived and died for."

For this King holiday -- 25 years after Mecham overturned Babbitt's decision -- Stewart said he hopes Americans and Arizonans reflect on what King stood for: "Non-violent, peaceful relationships among all people, regardless of race, creed, color, culture, faith."

"There is division and incivility in politics today that are turning his dream into a nightmare," Stewart said. "He would say, 'I want you to wake up out of the nightmare before it's too late.' "