| Popis: |
This chapter argues that President George H. W. Bush used the King Holiday to promote anti-communism. As communist governments fell in Eastern Europe and the USSR, and the Chinese Communist Party violently suppressed protests in China, Bush used King as an exemplar of the art of nonviolent protest. Further, both Nelson Mandela and South Africa’s President F. W. De Klerk used King’s legacy as they dismantled South Africa’s discriminatory apartheid system. When Bush launched the Gulf War under the banner of his New World Order concept, superficial comparisons were made to King’s World House idea. Yet the comparison faltered when the US issued Iraq with an ultimatum to withdraw from Kuwait, by King’s birthday, or war would ensue. This angered Coretta Scott King, who denounced the looming war as the antithesis of King’s World House idea. At the same time, the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Commission continued to lobby for the King Holiday to be observed in every state of the nation. When Arizona and New Hampshire finally agreed, the commission emerged victorious. |
