Arizona didn't celebrate Martin Luther King Day until 1993, a decade after it became a federal holiday. Here's how the Super Bowl played a role.

Arizona was one of the last states to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday and the only state that required a public vote to do so.

I'd never had a white person talk to me like that,' Warren Stewart Sr. says, recalling the late Gov. Evan Mecham and the Arizona battle over MLK Day.

The article outlines Arizona's contentious history with recognizing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a state holiday and the eventual voter approval in 1992.

It took a long and contentious fight to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a state holiday in Arizona. The big picture: The movement to carve out a day to honor King began shortly after his 1968 assassination.

Arizona was not the last state to create an ... the holdouts because of the resistance of controversial former Gov. Evan Mecham. On Jan. 12, 1987, Mecham rescinded a 1986 executive order by ...

Arizona was one of the last states to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday and the only state that required a public vote to do so. In 1987, Gov. Evan Mecham fulfilled a promise to ...

Most of the foot-dragging came from the South — except for Arizona. Then in 1987, Gov. Evan Mecham rescinded his predecessor's executive order enacting a state holiday in Arizona.

It’s been 61 years since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., made a memorable visit to the Arizona State University campus in downtown Tempe, delivering a speech that has come to