Martin Luther King Jr. was a civil rights leader. Almost every adult American, 95%, according to a CBS News poll, believes he was an important figure in United States history.
But it wasn’t always this way. King’s admiration and the establishment of a national holiday to celebrate his birthday were unthinkable during the activist’s lifetime.
During the 1960s, King was a figure that generated great polarization. A popularity poll conducted in 1966 showed that 63% of respondents viewed him unfavorably. This included 39% of Americans who rated him a -5 on a scale where -5 was the least favorable and +5 was the most favorable.
King’s highly negative rating came when he shifted his focus from the racial segregation of the South to the cities of the North.
But even before that, King was far from being universally admired. In mid-1964, when Congress was in the midst of passing many historic civil rights laws, King’s favorable rating was only 44%, while his unfavorable rating was 38%.
When Americans were asked which three Americans they had the least respect for in a 1964 Gallup poll, King came in second with 42%. This was just shy of the 47% recorded for George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama. Only 17% mentioned King’s name when asked about the three Americans they respected the most.
Perhaps even more revealing is that many white Americans thought King was doing more harm than good for the civil rights struggle. In a 1966 survey, 50% of white Americans indicated that he was hurting the civil rights effort. Only 36% said he was helping. King’s favorable rating among them was 27% in 1966.
As expected, African Americans viewed things very differently. The vast majority in 1963 believed that the reverend’s work for equal rights was moving at the right pace (71%), compared to 8% who thought it was happening too quickly. In 1966, 84% of Black adults had a favorable view of King, while 4% had an unfavorable view.
Some years after the activist’s death, in the mid-1970s, opinions about him became more positive. A majority (67%) of Americans believed that the protest marches he led helped to accelerate civil rights legislation.
The establishment of the holiday to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. was also not unanimous. In 1983, the year the legislation creating the holiday was passed by Congress, an ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that 48% of people did not want the creation of the national holiday, while 47% were in favor.
Some states lagged behind. South Carolina was the last state to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a non-optional state holiday, and this only happened in 2000.
As the 21st century approached, King’s legacy was solidified in the minds of Americans. An almost unanimous majority (89%) indicated that he was a person they admired in a 1999 poll.
In 2011, 94% of Americans had a favorable view of King in Gallup polls. This included a favorable rating of 89% among those aged 65 and older, meaning people born in 1927 or later. Among that same group in 1966, King’s favorable rating was 41%.
In other words, King’s now uniform popularity is not just because older generations have died. In fact, it was people’s minds that changed.
However, even though King has become enshrined in American culture, citizens of this country still feel that there is much work to be done to realize the civil rights leader’s dream of racial equality.
Many more Americans last year said they were very dissatisfied with the state of racial relations in this country (38%) than at the beginning of this century (14%), according to Gallup.
Additionally, 58% of Americans believe that white supremacy is still a major problem in the country, according to a PRRI survey conducted late last year, including 78% of Black Americans.
Source: CNN
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