Washington D.C.–The Department of National Holidays announced Monday Martin Luther King Jr. Day will be replaced with Tracy Turnblad Day, honoring the plump chick from Hairspray who fought for racial intergration of dancers on The Corny Collins Show.

“I know many people will be surprised, perhaps even shocked and outraged,” said Deputy Secretary of the Department of National Holidays Ed Miner during a press conference. “But as great as a man as Martin Luther King Jr. was, he wasn’t commercial enough to truly sell a holiday in the 21st century. However with the release of last summer’s hit film musical Hairspray the country saw a new Civil Rights leader emerge from forgotten history. One who can sing and dance and is still young enough to relate to the increasingly important teen demographic.”

Miner expects high-hair wigs, CDs, DVDs, and of course hairspray to be among the immediate tie-ins to Tracy Turnblad Day. “Yet Tracy Turnblad Day continues to grow over the next few years, I believe the card and candy industries will find ways to develop avenues of new traditions to go along in celebrating this splendid holiday,” said Miner. “Maybe even End Segregation yard signs will become the fad again.”

In 1962, during the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, Turnblad contested and eventually ended the segregation policy of Baltimore, MD, television station WYTZ. Her first act against the policy was convincing the local African-American community to march in slow-motion upon the station as Queen Latifah sung a stirring, emotionally exploitive hymn over the soundtrack.  Yet, the march accomplished little more than feeling tonally out of place with the colorful, campy style of 1962 Baltimore. However, Turnblad then delivered a more tonally suitable cou’de gra to the station’s segregation policy with an amusing hijacking of the “Miss Teenage Hairspray” pageant which brought about instant racial harmony within the Baltimore city limits.