“It should be a great event
And the whole day should be spent
In full remembrance
Of those who lived and died for the oneness of all people”
“Happy Birthday” — Stevie Wonder

Recorded in 1980, the song “Happy Birthday” was written at a time when a national holiday had not yet been put on the calendar to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Wonder released the song as the fourth single of his “Hotter than July” album.

While the purpose of the song was to be a rallying cry for political action, the chart did well on overseas chart, peaking at No. 2 in the United Kingdom and topping the charts in Israel.

The song has been re-released multiple times, and Wonder has continued performing the song as a regular part of his set list, though the blind pianist and vocalist doesn’t tour now as he is 73, he typically appears for special events, but this is typically one of the songs that he performs when he is invited somewhere.

It may seem radical to anyone born after 1980 that there would not be a reason to honor Martin Luther King, Jr., however, the reason he hadn’t been honored is the same reason that the song did not chart in the United States in 1981, when it was released.

Ronald Reagan swept into office in 1980 by mobilizing “Christian conservatives” into action, and many within that group still hold Reagan in high regard.

However, people who would gladly adopt the label of Christian conservative now lament what they call “cancel culture,” though they were the originators of it!

A nationwide boycott on “Happy Birthday” was held - not in tuning out of any radio station that would play it.

No, to their credit, what the “cancelers” did was quite intelligent as they researched the advertisers on radio stations that would likely be inclined to play the song and threatened not to do business with those advertisers if they were advertising on a station that played the song.

The advertisers were concerned for their bottom line, and the song struggled to find any airplay within this country as a result.

Reagan himself was firmly against the idea of a holiday for King - and civil rights protesters in general - going back before he was even a full-time politician.

In her book “The Struggle for the People’s King” (hat tip for inspiration for the column title), Southern Cal professor Hajar Yazdiha explains that the decision was not made by Reagan to eventually sign the day into law in 1983 without some pretty strong wording to his supporters.

When confronted about “giving in” to those demanding a day to honor King, Reagan stated that honoring the man would allow for the narrative to turn that King’s “dreams” had been achieved and we can move past those concerns now, which would silence those protesting the treatment of women and minorities in many industries at the time.

Sure enough, 40 years later, King’s legacy has been co-opted by many who never, ever would have been a supporter of his in his lifetime.

The subtitle of Yazdiha’s book is “How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement.” She’s not wrong, either.

Our own governor attempted to use King’s words to chastise protestors of the Keystone pipeline. She strongly backed two bills in 2019 in response to those protests that were later struck down in a settlement, after multiple lawsuits were filed regarding the unconstitutionality of the laws.

In 2020, many people attempted to use King as an example to why shutting down a highway during racial protests was wrong, stating that King would never have done such a thing…except that’s one of his most famous protests!

In March 1965 - nearly 60 years ago already! - King led a group of protestors to march a 54-mile highway from Selma, Alabama to the state’s capital, Montgomery, to protest the disenfranchisement of black voters in the state, often by force.

The initial march began early that month, but was met with whips, clubs, and tear gas by Alabama state troopers, under the instruction of governor George Wallace in a brutal, violent beat-down of protestors that has come to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”

King then retooled a march days later, but found Wallace had positioned troops just beyond the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside of Selma with orders not to let the protestors pass.

King chose to regroup again, and this time, with an injunction from the U.S. district court, an assurance of safety directly from President Lyndon B. Johnson, and protection from U.S. Army troops and Alabama National Guardsmen, U.S. Highway 80 was completely shut down for nearly 50 miles of the 54-mile stretch that protestors walked, as the group made its way to the capital.

Misremembering King’s legacy is a big factor in the extremely biased film released recently, titled “The Fall of Minneapolis.”

The film attempts to paint the George Floyd murder and subsequent prosecution of officer Derek Chauvin as a shame that was intentionally mishandled by media and the judicial system.

The film’s producer, Liz Collin, goes to great lengths to edit a publicly-available trial, body cam footage, and autopsy information about the case.

The problem: nearly all of her claims were addressed at the time in the media and at the trial.

Many of the things that she edits to appear as if the jury didn’t hear were in actuality, presented to the jury.

More than 150 videos of the incident were shown to the jury from every possible angle, although Collin prefers one particular angle that seems to make Chauvin’s knee hold appear less intrusive than the 100-plus angles that show him obstructing the airway.

No one asserted during the trial that Floyd’s airway was damaged, simply that his breathing was impaired.

Deena Winter, who was covering the trial for the Wall Street Journal at the time, points out many discrepancies that Collin’s video simply avoids - like the fact that the media showed her “bombshell” photograph from the Minneapolis Police Department’s (MPD) training manual within two months of Floyd’s passing to examine how the MPD was trained.

Collin then utilized multiple edited clips of the MPD chief stating that the method used by the responding officers was not in line with the training manual in such a way to make it sound like the chief declined that the procedure existed in the manual - which is not at all what was said.

The chief stated that the implementation of the technique was not done as the manual states, as Chauvin and the other three officers involved remained on top of Floyd for more than three minutes after his body had gone limp, where the technique suggested, in the MPD manual, that a person under this maximum restraint technique should be moved to a safe position as soon as possible specifically to prevent positional asphyxia.

Essentially, those claiming that Collin’s film shows the “truth” of the Floyd situation are akin to those who claim that Fox News or CNN present only “truth” in their broadcasting.

For what it’s worth, the coverage of Collin’s film on the fall of the 3rd Precinct building is fairly good.

The lack of a comprehensive plan for protests in that area was a major issue for MPD, especially after the protests following the Philando Castile killing in 2016, protests that my wife and I witnessed in person, exposed the need for a plan for future protests.

The police worked with protestors after Castile’s death, but failed to have a plan ready when the situation occurred less than four years later in May and into June of 2020.

One thing I noted in the film was that there were a number of residential units on fire that were primarily lived in by minority residents. The unaltered videos of area businesses being looted - rather than Collin’s edited versions that were very intentionally done for a narrative purpose - showed a whole lot of different races of people participating and even instigating the damage and looting.

Heck, Collin even used footage of a person breaking windows on a business - that person was later shown to be white, in a face mask and long clothes to disguise his appearance.

The whole story was presented on Floyd as it was released. That is one step of progress that King’s protests set forth.

The news coverage of the violence against protestors with King brought thousands more to join his Selma-to-Montgomery walk. Those who arrived were appalled at the treatment of Black people in those news videos along with “finding out” that Black people were intentionally being kept from voting, a story that was always there, but seldom explicitly reported before the Civil Rights Movement.

Even then, much of King’s actual work is whitewashed at this point, and revealing the truth behind the man is uncomfortable for many who want his legacy to be set in a particular nonviolent, fuzzy way.

Major changes in history rarely are revealed in the minute, and often they have fingers that take decades to reveal themselves. The murder of George Floyd has revealed many things that a certain groups of people wish would have stayed the same or remained uncovered, just like the protests and words of Martin Luther King, Jr. similarly exposed things to the world, 70 years prior.

So, while many will try to co-opt King’s words or life in remembering him Monday, take a moment on the holiday to truly examine his life and realize that the path that his work began in this country nearly 70 years ago is still underway and should be acknowledged - not debased with mistruths and fancy editing of just one of the recent indications that King’s work is not yet completed.