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Monday, January 19. 2009
Dr. Martin Luther King
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Without question one of the greatest, most influential Americans of the 20th Century. Every African-American politician can and should thank Martin Luther King, Jr. for their access to the halls of power. Without King, there’s no telling where civil rights for all Americans would be right now.Despite that reality, there are those who don’t believe the greatest civil rights leader in our history ought to be honored with a day that, until this holiday was created, was set aside for presidents. And there are only two of those 43 presidents honored: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
Barack Obama’s rival in the 2008 presidential election, John McCain, even pushed hard against making Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday in 1983. He later changed his position on it and when there was debate in Arizona to recognize the holiday, McCain lobbied hard and won the support of President Reagan to have Arizona recognize Dr. Martin Luther King Day.
In 2000, the state of South Carolina finally recognized the day, 17 years after it was created nationally. Up until the point, South Carolinians could observe either King’s Day or a holiday from the Confederacy! Is your head spinning too?
And today there will be topics and posts in online forums as well as letters to the editors denouncing this holiday as un-American. It’s funny how advocating for the very civil liberties promised in our Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by our Constitution is considered un-American. Not just in the case of Martin Luther King, but for anyone and any organization. The American Civil Liberties Union always comes under fire for it’s advocacy of the rights and liberties of all Americans.
Today though, the brunt of that anti-liberty hostility will be cast onto one man, on his name and legacy: the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Maybe that’s a good thing because it reminds the rest of us not to take Dr. King and his legacy for granted, to keep reminding the world of who he was — who he is — in the history of the United States.We have so taken for granted the legacies of both Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, their collective birthdays have been relegated to the scrap heap of advertising furniture sales. Not so, yet, with Martin Luther King.
What a mistake to combine the days into one “Presidents Day.” That alone diminished the accomplishments of not just Lincoln and Washington, but other great presidents that ought to be honored.
It can easily be argued that without the Civil Rights Movement for African-Americans, the Women’s Rights Movement wouldn’t have had the success in achieved in the 1970’s. The Civil Rights Movement, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the forefront, pushed the door open for the advancement of civil liberties for all oppressed Americans.
We sometimes forget that Martin Luther King was a Christian minister, a Baptist no less. I’m not going to be a hypocrite and extol the virtues of his religion, I simply do not care for religion, but I will extol the virtues of Dr. King’s religious convictions that formed his commitment to civil rights. If there ever was a religious leader for our times, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was that person.
Dr. King would have been 80 years old Thursday, his actual birthday, but on April 4, 1968, he was murdered. There are two speeches he gave, among the thousands he delivered, that stand out in the public eye; his 1963 “I Have a Dream,” delivered during the great — and peaceful — March on Washington. A few excerpts: In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
His other often remembered and quoted speech, the last of his life: Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead, but it doesn’t matter with me now because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Tomorrow, when Barack Obama is sworn in as our 44th President of the United States, we can tell Dr. King’s children we have arrived at the gates of the Promised Land.
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