Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King Day is on Monday. As time goes by it is easy to minimize the social crises of the past, our memories softening the transgressions with the haze of time. We have not changed as a species. Humans are humans, capable of great strength and great weakness. We are social animals, emotional decision makers, and well able to rationalize positions with which we are socially and emotionally comfortable. We have not changed our basic nature in the over 40 years since Martin Luther King was assassinated. We have not changed in the many decades since the holocaust. Our strength comes from our ability to face our personal weaknesses and recognize where an argument carries the light of truth and where it simply cloaks a position from which we personally benefit.

Do a search online on Martin Luther King. Many of his speeches are available to hear.

He was a powerful and eloquent speaker, willing to stand up and call people to fight racial injustice with their hearts and souls, to face violence and hatred with strength and character. He did this at a time when bigotry was a dominant pattern in the weave of culture, so much so that violence against anyone who threatened to unravel that culture was practiced by some and condoned by many. His words lay bare the reality that comfortable society chose to ignore or rationalize.

Martin Luther King was a citizen of this great country. Of that we should be very proud.

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."
Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream, 1963.

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.
Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream, 1963.