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Songs that Made History

Martin Luther King Day: The song that changed the US

With Happy Birthday, Stevie Wonder successfully campaigned to honour Martin Luther King Jr with a national holiday, in a long career of socially conscious songwriting, writes Diane Bernard.

On 15 January 1981, music legends Diana Ross and Gladys Knight, along with the "godfather of rap", Gil Scott-Heron, joined renowned musician Stevie Wonder on stage at the National Mall in Washington, DC. The 50,000-strong audience chanted: "Martin Luther King Day, we took a holiday," according to Scott-Heron’s 2012 memoir, The Last Holiday, as the stars began to sing Wonder's hit song, Happy Birthday, a tribute to the murdered civil rights leader.

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"I just never understood/ How a man who died for good/ Could not have a day that would/ Be set aside for his recognition," they sang, electrifying the crowd.

The 1980 song had represented the start of Wonder's campaign to make the birthday of renowned peace activist, Martin Luther King Jr, into a federal holiday. For three years Wonder put his life on hold and dedicated tours, rallies and marches to bring his vision to life – a quest that would establish the first holiday in the US that honoured a black American.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of US President Ronald Reagan signing into law the bill that established Martin Luther King Day. Many today might be surprised to realise the instrumental role Stevie Wonder played in getting the legislation passed. But in fact, the global superstar's artistry and political activism were intertwined throughout his career, even before the MLK Day drive, as he repeatedly called attention to social issues of mid-century America.

After Dr King's assassination in April 1968, US Representative John Conyers Jr from Detroit, Michigan, and Wonder's congressman, introduced a bill to make the activist's birthday a federal holiday. But for 13 years, the bill languished, facing opposition from southern Democrats and conservative Republicans. For years, Wonder had quietly advocated for the holiday. But then, in 1979, he shared a dream he had with King's widow, Coretta Scott King. In a 2011 interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Wonder said: "I said to her… 'I imagined in this dream I was doing this song. We were marching with petition signs to make Dr King's birthday a national holiday.'"

Scott King was excited, Wonder explained, but she also doubted his dream could come true at a time the nation was turning more and more conservative with the rise of Reaganism and New Right politicians in the Sun Belt (the Southern US), a reaction against President Lyndon Baines Johnson's liberal agenda of the 1960s. But Wonder felt compelled by his dream and the next year he wrote Happy Birthday, for Hotter than July, a 1980 album that peaked at number three in the US charts and number two in the UK. Joined by Scott King, Wonder used his 1981 tour for that album as a worldwide drive to advocate for the holiday.

It's amazing that someone could just write something that becomes a standard part of life as well as have political significance – Nelson George

"Stevie Wonder could write almost any kind of song," music critic and documentary filmmaker Nelson George tells BBC Culture. "And as part of his mix of songs and melodies, he was always able to create songs about social injustice, particularly happy, major chord melodies that were easy to sing to," he adds. George compares Happy Birthday – a big, cheerful song – to another of Wonder's, Isn't She Lovely. "For a whole group of people who grew up in the past 40 years, Happy Birthday has become the standard birthday song," he says. "It's amazing that someone could just write something that becomes a standard part of life as well as have political significance, but he was able to do that."

Wonder's quest to create a Martin Luther King Day holiday also followed the tradition of US musicians and popular artists who joined movements for social change throughout the 20th Century, according to Kevin Gaines, the Julian Bond professor of civil rights and social justice at the University of Virginia.

"He's right in line with Woody Guthrie in the 1930s and 40s, whose songs reflected the social issues of the time," Gaines tells BBC Culture. "And African-American opera singer, Marian Anderson, who sang in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC to protest the Daughters of the American Revolution's refusal to let her sing in their meeting hall," he adds. "And also Billie Holiday, who recorded the anti-lynching anthem, Strange Fruit, and was harassed in the South when she sang it live."

Stevie Wonder's career closely tracked the mid-century civil rights movement, starting from his first number one hit, Fingertips, in 1963, Gaines says. Wonder was just 13 years old when Fingertips hit the charts in the summer of 1963 – released in the wake of King's campaign to desegregate public accommodations in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Ostensibly a party song, Fingertips isn't overtly political like Wonder's later songs. But the live recording is symbolic, with the 13-year-old's call and response to African-American teens to follow him in his celebration of black American rhythm and blues and soul beats. "The Birmingham protests made world headlines," Gaines says, "with photos and footage of police attacking children with dogs and high-pressure water hoses." Fingertips was a harbinger for how young people were going to be involved in the civil rights movement and youth protests of the 1960s. "It becomes kind of a soundtrack to that movement," says Gaines.

Although many of his early songs were not overtly political, throughout the 1960s, Wonder spoke directly in the African-American press about civil rights, Gaines says. "It's unclear whether or not white Americans are hearing what he's saying about the movement as it's gaining momentum. But he's on national TV along with other Motown artists crossing over into mainstream success," he says. And at that time, for any black artist to be on national TV with crossover appeal was a significant achievement.

Wonder embraced the creative freedom and artistic independence he got from his new contract, fulfilling his ambitions of making music a forum for black political concerns and from a black perspective

While touring internationally during his teen years, Wonder connected with audiences overseas, getting a sense of himself as a global superstar and spokesperson. By the late 1960s, he was inspired by other black artists, including Bill Withers, Curtis Mayfield and Gil Scott-Heron, who were making socially conscious music. In 1969, Wonder saw fellow Motown star Marvin Gaye struggle to make his concept album, What's Going On, for a label reluctant to be seen as overtly political. After hearing the song, What's Going On, in 1970, Motown owner Berry Gordy was absolutely opposed to releasing it, thinking that a social commentary concept song and album would be a disaster for Motown's crossover reputation. A seven-month power struggle began between Gaye and Gordy over making the record, which finally ended with the release of what became one of the most important protest albums in pop music history. Realising he wanted to express his own opinions, Wonder renegotiated his contract with Motown and by 1971, at the age of 21, Wonder retained full control of his music and publishing, a rare opportunity in the pop music world. He embraced the creative freedom and artistic independence he got from the new contract – fulfilling his ambitions of making music a forum for black political concerns and from a black perspective.

In 1972, he released the seminal album, Talking Book, with politically charged songs including Big Brother, which contained some of the frankest, most socially conscious lyrics he had written up to that point.

"Big Brother is a very strong protest song," Gaines tells BBC Culture. "He says 'You've killed all our leaders… You've caused your own country to fail.'" Wonder was describing a US society that responded to the social movements of the 1960s with violence and a series of political assassinations. "He's clearly questioning the legitimacy of the political order at that time," says Gaines.

The early 1970s was a disastrous era for African-American activists, with state crackdowns on the Black Panthers and the killing of Black Power leaders in Chicago, and Big Brother reflected those real events. On Wonder's next album, Innervisions, songs including Higher Ground, Too High, and of course, one of his most influential songs, Living for the City, gave a stark view of the urban landscape. A cinematic story of the 20th-Century black American migration from the rural South to urban North, the song features a spoken word interlude that takes us right on to New York City streets with the roar of a bus and police sirens. It describes how a young black man from Mississippi gets caught up in crime, drugs and the police brutality many urban African Americans faced at the time – and remains relevant into the 21st Century.

By 1980, with the release of Happy Birthday's call to action, Wonder was one of the most important musicians in the country, and Dr King's birthday became a rallying point to codify his activism, says Nelson George. "People were looking at that point to honour King and his movement and the change in America."

But the America that King was murdered in, in 1968, was different from that of 1980, with civil rights struggles morphing into new challenges like equal opportunity in housing and education. The newly-elected Regan administration was cool on civil rights issues, and Reagan initially spoke out against the idea of a national holiday, resurrecting the old innuendo about King being a subversive communist, just as civil rights opponents in the 1950s had. 

"There were people then and probably still now, who just didn't want a black person to have a national holiday," George says. Many in the US also balked at the idea of making a holiday for someone who wasn't a president or a government official, let alone a social activist. "There were a lot of threads working against this happening," he adds.

After Wonder's Hotter than July tour in 1981, he and Scott King began heavy lobbying of politicians and in 1982 delivered a petition to Congress with six million signatures. By January 1983, Wonder decided not to repeat his annual rally at the National Mall. Instead, he switched tactics and spent the day at a special legislative hearing to urge Congress to pass legislation. Finally, on 2 November 1983, their activism bore fruit, and President Reagan signed a bill into law to create a federal holiday honouring Martin Luther King Jr's birthday.

"It was wonderful to see the biggest artist of his time, through his peak years of popularity, harness his talent and his celebrity to do something that actually made a difference," George says, adding that with the passage of the new law, we should see the song Happy Birthday as a "successful piece of political agitation".

"I think that artists have been the catalyst for expressing social conditions since the beginning of all time,” Stevie Wonder said in 1980, when he first announced his drive for a national MLK Day. "I am not political. I am not a leader. I am a human being given the honour and gift of song. And with it, I give the best possible."

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