Recently, I read news articles regarding what the Washington Post called “The War Against Columbus Day.” Evidently, there is a movement afoot to rewrite history or engage in still more political correctness by changing the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day. The change is hardly a recent idea, since Berkeley, Calif., and South Dakota were the first city and state, respectively, to do that back in the 1990s. This letter is not about the merits of an Indigenous People’s Day, but rather to suggest a change to another federal/state holiday if all this historical revisionism and political correctness doesn’t end soon. I was raised in the South, where college football is a religion and not just a game. Therefore, I suggest the Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) federal/state holiday be replaced with Sam Cunningham Day because true college football fans know “he [Cunningham] did more for integration in 60 minutes than Martin Luther King did in 20 years.” Just ask former Alabama assistant coach Jerry Claiborne, who made that observation after USC’s integrated team beat Alabama’s all-white team 42-21 on Sept. 12, 1970. SEC universities integrated their football programs thereafter in order to stay competitive on the gridiron, and the South followed suit at a slower pace.
Robert Blevins, Garden City
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