COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- The bill gives South Carolina a holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but it became law without the support of many whose civil rights King championed.
The state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People wanted Gov. Jim Hodges to veto the bill, which also established a holiday honoring Confederate Memorial Day."We're against tying the two together," James Gallman, president of the state NAACP, said Sunday night. "And the people we're talking to are also against it."
Hodges signed the bill Monday in a ceremony at Rosewood Elementary School -- including planting a tree grown from a seedling from Selma, Ala. -- to honor the King holiday.
South Carolina was the last state in the nation to create a day for the slain civil rights leader.