In Remembrance: Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929 at the onset of the Great Depression.  Those were hard times for everyone, yet the King family thrived and when he was a young man of 26 years, Dr. King helped organize and lead a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama to demonstrate the effectiveness of passive resistance as an agent of change. He went on to be the first President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a powerhouse of African-American activists committed to using non-violent (civil) means for bringing about change for people of color.  His life at this point was a series of marches, protests, and other peaceful forms of resistance to white authority, during which he was cursed, threatened, beaten, jailed, and subject to every conceivable form of denigration. He and his family’s lives were threatened. The infamous J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, used his considerable power to deprive Dr. King of any privacy or dignity.  FBI agents harassed him, spied on him and monitored his every move.

 By 1963, Dr. King became famous for the Birmingham, Alabama protests and his March on Washington.  It was in the nation’s capital, standing before the Lincoln Memorial overlooking the expanse of the mall filled with 250,000 people that he gave his famous speech, “I Have a Dream”.  King’s commanding oratorical style lifted the crowd that hot, muggy August night.  It may have been the largest gathering. The critical mass of  “we the people” transformed the national perspective.  King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a year later.

 He went on to help organize the famous Selma to Montgomery  march in Alabama  where African-Americans marched in fear of their lives through crowds of armed and angry white men.  This dramatic demonstration  provided the political impetus to bring about the long awaited civil rights legislation. Now at his peak in influence and respect, he was expanding his work to Chicago and his causes to ending the Vietnam War and poverty.

 Then he was assassinated.  This man whose power was so great that he could accomplish miracles without violence was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.  And here we are. We the people, remembering the man who once gave us hope and leadership and wondering what if.  What if he had lived longer than 39 years? 

There are many ways to honor such a man.  The memorial sitting on four acres of prime real estate in Washington DC that links the sight lines to the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial is certainly one.  But another that Dr. King might prefer is for we the people to find our voices and our courage to be his kind of patriot.

Please join us at the Martin Luther King Celebration on Sunday, January 19, 3:00 PM at the Nelson Heritage Center to honor his memory.