When Ronald Reagan arrived in office, a handful of states had a holiday celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Many more had chosen not to have one. Reagan signed a federal King holiday into law in 1983. Glorious and tragic though King’s life was, the felt need to commemorate it was waning in the 1980s. The city council in San Diego had changed the name of Market Street to Martin Luther King Way in 1986, only to see voters reverse the change by a landslide margin in a referendum a year later.
