President Joe Biden — then a U.S. Senator — stood behind Coretta Scott King as she spoke in the White House Rose Garden at the 1983 signing of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day bill.

Biden invoked painful historical echoes during his voting rights speech this week, in ways that upset some people. The section of the speech that got the most attention was the one in which he asked how Republican opponents of voting rights bills want to be remembered: “Do you want to be the si- — on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”

He also invoked the holiday, noting that this weekend “Americans of all stripes will praise him for the content of his character.”

“But as Dr. King’s family said before, it’s not enough to praise their father. They even said: On this holiday, don’t celebrate his birthday unless you’re willing to support what he lived for and what he died for,” he added.

As it happens, the president was there when the law creating the holiday was signed, standing right behind King’s widow Coretta Scott King as she delivered a speech after the signing.

Mrs. King thanked then-President Reagan for signing the bill, which passed with a veto-proof majority over Reagan’s objections, and spoke about her husband’s legacy. A week earlier, Reagan had called Mrs. King to apologize for remarks he made at a press conference the day the bill was passed.

The speech came almost three years, to the day, after Mrs. King told the Associated Press, as she campaigned for then-President Jimmy Carter’s reelection, that she was afraid of the prospect of a Reagan presidency.

“I am scared. I am scared that if Ronald Reagan gets into office, we are going to see more of the Ku Klux Klan and a resurgence of the Nazi Party,” she said.

Biden can be seen throughout most of the speech standing directly behind Mrs. King. And at the very end, you can hear Biden tell Mrs. King “Well done” as he is shaking hands with her.

The then-senator also made news of his own that day:

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Delaware Democrat, said today that he had gained support from 52 other senators, including 13 Republicans, for a bill to establish a commission on civil rights as an arm of Congress. After Mr. Reagan dismissed three members of the Civil Rights Commission last week, civil rights lobbyists began a campaign to remove the agency from the executive branch.

After the speech, members of the audience can be heard singing “We shall overcome” in the Rose Garden.

Watch above via Reagan Library.

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