ABSTRACT
This chapter will examine how the sports media has used the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to tell the story of race, football, and the Super Bowl from the late 1960s through the end of the twentieth century, with implications for the twenty-first century. From the very beginning, the NFL’s Super Bowl and the legacy of Dr. King have been connected through the words and actions of NFL players, the civil rights movement, and the sports media. With the creation of the Martin Luther King federal holiday in 1983, the link between the big game and King Day became even stronger, with the Super Bowl being played within a week or two of the holiday. Throughout the 1980s, news media stories were repeatedly published using MLK Day to discuss the role of African American players in the NFL. The connections between the Super Bowl, Dr. King, and the NFL came to the forefront in 1990 when the NFL removed the 1993 Super Bowl from Phoenix after state voters failed to approve the King holiday. Since then, the NFL’s boycott of Arizona has become a standard touchstone for media coverage of sports and civil rights.
