#FlashbackFriday: Before a National Holiday Was Declared, the Exchange Honored Martin Luther King Jr.

In late 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation declaring Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national holiday. The holiday, the third Monday of January (King was born on Jan. 15, 1929), was first celebrated in 1986, although the Department of Defense first observed the holiday in 1985.

Years before the legislation was signed, Exchanges honored King, often in tandem with Black History Month celebrations. The Exchange’s first organization-wide celebration was in 1981, kicking off with a ceremony at Dallas headquarters.

A choral group consisting of HQ associates made its debut at the ceremony, opening with a performance of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Janice Jemison, a singer at the Community Bible Church in Dallas, sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” often referred to as the Black National Anthem. The R. L. Thornton Elementary School Singers and two fifth-grade singers from John W. Carpenter Elementary School also performed.

The Rev. J. C. Adams, pastor of the Greater South Central Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas and a boyhood friend of King’s, was keynote speaker. King and Adams grew up together but separated when Adams moved to Austin, Texas. “I left Martin as a boy” Adams said, “but then I heard voices and echoes ringing the name of my friend” in his activism, his speeches and finally at news of his death.

Although the 1981 commemoration was the first one Exchange-wide, Exchange associates were honoring King before then, as shown in the below photos from Exchange Post archives.

1977: Visual Merchandiser Anita Paplin honors King with this display at Plattsburgh AFB in New York.

1978: Members of the Black Awareness Committee at Norton AFB in California surround a portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a display created by Visual Merchandising Specialist Melodie Magnuson. The 5-foot square display was part of a Black Art Show presented by the Norton BX and the Southern California Area Exchange.

Also from 1978: An endcap display at the Altus AFB Exchange in Oklahoma featured this drawing of King by Visual Merchandising Technician Al Garza.

(No photo available) In 1980, the Rev. Dr. Felix E. James, a longtime Baptist minister and civil-rights activist in Montgomery, Alabama, who knew King, spoke at Southeast Exchange Region headquarters. James presented “a vivid picture of King as a man—not as a wonder worker—and spoke about specific aspects of King’s career,” the Exchange Post reported. This year marks the 60^th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches, which King and the Southern Christian Leader Conference launched in March 1965; and the 70^th anniversary of the start of the Montgomery bus boycott, which King organized in December 1955 after Rosa Parks was arrested when she refused to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery.

Also in 1980, ceremonies were held on King’s birthday at a number of locations and many Exchange associates attended. Public-address announcements were made in several stores detailing the life of King. At the Moody AFB Exchange in Georgia, associates wore a strip of black cloth with the words “AAFES Salutes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

During the Exchange’s 1981 commemoration, customers at the Griffis AFB Exchange in New York were greeted by a display of photos from King’s life—and by this chalk portrait of King, drawn by personnel assistant Jeanette Sanders.