Stevie Wonder sang “Happy Birthday” for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on January 15, 1981, at a mass rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Wonder had released the song Happy Birthday in 1980 as a direct call for the holiday. The 1981 National Mall performance—alongside Coretta Scott King and Rep. John Conyers, who initially introduced the legislation April 8 1968—became one of the most iconic moments in the movement. The federal holiday was ultimately signed into law in 1983 and first obse