Former WJBC news director recalls time with King

Former WJBC News Director Don Newberg (right) interviewed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1961. (WJBC Archive)

BLOOMINGTON – Few Central Illinoisans can say they’ve talked with the Rev. Martin Luther King, but former WJBC News Director Don Newberg is one of them.

He covered two King visits to Illinois Wesleyan University. King was on campus in 1961 and 1966. Newberg interviewed him only the first time.

Newberg remembers King as a “very great interview.”

“You knew that, even though he was beginning to make a name for himself the first time he was here, you knew it was a man of some destiny,” Newberg said.

After King was assassinated in 1968, Newberg recalls no more serious local consequences than some small fires, though there was more unrest as Vietnam unfolded.

Newberg is retired and lives in Bloomington.

Listen to the audio from MLK’s 1966 speech at Illinois Wesleyan.

MLK holiday history

While the holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was created in 1983 after the signing of legislation by President Ronald Reagan, the movement to honor Dr. King’s birthday actually began 15 years earlier, just four days after his assassination on April 4, 1968.

It was then that Democratic Michigan Rep. John Conyers took the initiative to submit the first legislation to propose King’s birthday as a national holiday. After years of petitioning and mounting public pressure, the House of Representatives finally approved the holiday legislation in August 1983, and President Reagan signed it into law on Nov. 2 of that year. Dr. King is the only American besides George Washington to have a national holiday designated for his birthday.

Dr. King speaking at Illinois Wesleyan University in 1966. (WJBC Archive)

The first federal MLK holiday went into effect on Jan. 20, 1986, though several states were still resistant to the idea. Some said King did not deserve his own holiday; several southern states chose to include celebrations for various Confederate generals on that day; and other states, like Utah, opted to call the day Human Rights Day.

In 1992, after a threatened tourist boycott, voters in the state of Arizona, one of the last states to adopt the MLK holiday, approved the holiday. And, in 1999, the state of New Hampshire became the last state to accept the holiday, changing its Civil Rights Day to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on Jan. 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Ga. He would have been 83 years old this year.

Metro News Service contributed to this report.