Honouring Dr. Martin Luther King …

Posted on by under History, Holidays, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary, Tributes, voting rights

If he had lived, Martin Luther King would be celebrating his 95th birthday today.  I first wrote this post in 2017 and have repeated it annually on Martin Luther King Day every year since, with some alterations as needed.  Every year, I think I should write a new one, but then I read this one and … it says everything I want to say, so … why re-invent the wheel?  In the past several years, I have been alarmed by the rise in racism in the United States and have often wished we had a Dr. King to lead the way through the darkness.  Much of the country is robbing our young people of an education that teaches the true history of the nation, and far too many in this country seem to wish to return to the days of Jim Crow.  Diversity is mocked, even scorned in some circles and even the highest court in the land seems to lean heavily toward “white nationalism”.  Martin … come back … WE NEED YOU!!!!

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that.” 

“That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.”

mlk-3Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on 15 January 1929.  He would have been 95 years old today, had he lived. On this day, we celebrate not only his life, but also his legacy. Martin Luther King Day celebrates not only Dr. King, but the movement he inspired and all those who helped move forward the notion of equal rights for ALL people, all those who worked tirelessly during the civil rights era of the 1960s, as well as those who are continuing the good fight even in this, the year 2024.  Dr. King’s fight lives on, even though we have moved further away than before from his dream.

Dr. King, along with President John F. Kennedy, was the most moving speaker I have ever heard.  To this day, I cannot listen to his ‘I Have A Dream’ speech without tears filling my eyes.  If you haven’t heard it for a while, take a few minutes to watch/listen … I promise it will be worth your time.

This post is both a commemoration and a plea for us to carry on the work that was only begun, not yet finished, more than five decades ago.  Today we should remember some of the great heroes of the civil rights movement, those who worked tirelessly, some who gave their lives, that we could all live in peace and harmony someday: Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Nelson Mandela, Nina Simone, Mary McLeod Bethune, Lena Horne, Marva Collins, Rosa Parks, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, Roy Innes, Medgar Evers, Stepen Bantu Biko, Booker T. Washington, John Lewis, Percy Julian, Marcus Garvey, Desmond Tutu, E.D. Nixon, James Meredith, and so many more.  I am willing to bet there are some on this list of whom you’ve never heard, or perhaps recognize the name but not the accomplishments. If you’re interested, you can find brief biographies of each of these and more at Biography.com .

Yet, while we celebrate the achievements of Dr. King and the others, there is still much to be done. Just look around you, read the news each day. Think about these statistics:

  • More than one in five black families live in households that are food insecure, compared to one in ten white families
  • Almost four in ten black children live in a household in poverty, nearly twice the rate of other racial groups
  • Among prime-age adults (ages 25 to 54), about one in five black men are not in the labor force, nearly twice the rate of other racial groups
  • Although blacks and whites use marijuana at approximately the same rate, blacks are over 3 and a half times more likely to get arrested for marijuana possession
  • For every dollar earned by a white worker, a black worker only makes 74 cents
  • Black families are twice as likely as whites to live in substandard housing conditions
  • Black college graduates now have twice the amount of debt as white college graduates
  • The likelihood of a black woman born in 2001 being imprisoned over the course of her lifetime is one in 18, compared to 1 in 111 for a white woman
  • Similarly, the likelihood of a black man being imprisoned is 1 in 3, compared to 1 in 17 for a white man
  • Of black children born into the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution, about half of them will still be there as adults, compared to less than one-quarter of white children

Data courtesy of the Brookings Institute – for charts and supporting details of above date, please click on link. 

And of course the above data does not even touch upon the recent spate of hate crimes, racial profiling, and police shootings against African-Americans.  There is still much of Dr. King’s work to be accomplished. But who is left to do this work?  Most of the leaders of yore are long since gone. There are still noble and courageous people out there carrying on the programs and works of Dr. King and the others, but their voices are perhaps not as loud, and there are none so charismatic as the late Dr. King.

In the current environment of racial divisiveness, we need more than ever to carry on what Dr. King only started. Instead, the past several years have found our nation backtracking on civil and human rights in a number of areas, ranging from discriminatory travel bans against Muslims to turning a federal blind eye to intentionally racially discriminatory state voter-suppression schemes, to opposing protections for transgender people, to parents demanding a re-write of our history to salve their own consciences.  I think Dr. King would be appalled if he returned to visit today.

In a speech on April 12th, 1850, then-Senator and future President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis said:

“This Government was not founded by negroes nor for negroes, but by white men for white men.” [1]

That was wrong then, it is wrong today, and it will always be wrong.  That is what Dr. Martin Luther King fought against, that is what I rail and sometimes rant against, that is why we need activists and groups dedicated to fighting for equality for all people … today, tomorrow, and forever.

Here is a bit of trivia you may not know about Dr. King …

  • King’s birth name was Michael, not Martin.
    The civil rights leader was born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929. In 1934, however, his father, a pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, traveled to Germany and became inspired by the Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther. As a result, King Sr. changed his own name as well as that of his 5-year-old son.

  • King entered college at the age of 15.
    King was such a gifted student that he skipped grades nine and 12 before enrolling in 1944 at Morehouse College, the alma mater of his father and maternal grandfather. Although he was the son, grandson and great-grandson of Baptist ministers, King did not intend to follow the family vocation until Morehouse president Benjamin E. Mays, a noted theologian, convinced him otherwise. King was ordained before graduating college with a degree in sociology.

  • King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was not his first at the Lincoln Memorial.
    Six years before his iconic oration at the March on Washington, King was among the civil rights leaders who spoke in the shadow of the Great Emancipator during the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom on May 17, 1957. Before a crowd estimated at between 15,000 and 30,000, King delivered his first national address on the topic of voting rights. His speech, in which he urged America to “give us the ballot,” drew strong reviews and positioned him at the forefront of the civil rights leadership.

  • King was imprisoned nearly 30 times.
    According to the King Center, the civil rights leader went to jail 29 times. He was arrested for acts of civil disobedience and on trumped-up charges, such as when he was jailed in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1956 for driving 30 miles per hour in a 25-mile-per-hour zone.

  • King narrowly escaped an assassination attempt a decade before his death.
    On September 20, 1958, King was in Harlem signing copies of his new book, “Stride Toward Freedom,” in Blumstein’s department store when he was approached by Izola Ware Curry. The woman asked if he was Martin Luther King Jr. After he said yes, Curry said, “I’ve been looking for you for five years,” and she plunged a seven-inch letter opener into his chest. The tip of the blade came to rest alongside his aorta, and King underwent hours of delicate emergency surgery. Surgeons later told King that just one sneeze could have punctured the aorta and killed him. From his hospital bed where he convalesced for weeks, King issued a statement affirming his nonviolent principles and saying he felt no ill will toward his mentally ill attacker.

  • King’s mother was also slain by a bullet.
    On June 30, 1974, as 69-year-old Alberta Williams King played the organ at a Sunday service inside Ebenezer Baptist Church, Marcus Wayne Chenault Jr. rose from the front pew, drew two pistols and began to fire shots. One of the bullets struck and killed King, who died steps from where her son had preached nonviolence. The deranged gunman said that Christians were his enemy and that although he had received divine instructions to kill King’s father, who was in the congregation, he killed King’s mother instead because she was closer. The shooting also left a church deacon dead. Chenault received a death penalty sentence that was later changed to life imprisonment, in part due to the King family’s opposition to capital punishment.

Dr. King fought and ultimately gave his life for the values I believe in, the values that should define this nation, though they often do not.  Dr. Martin Luther King was a hero of his time … thank you, Dr. King, for all you did, for the values you gave this nation, and for the hope you instilled in us all that your dream will someday come true.

[1] (Kendi, 2016)   stamped

Note:  Our friend TokyoSand has written a post with ideas for how each of us can help carry on Dr. King’s legacy … I hope you’ll pay her a visit!

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31 thoughts on “Honouring Dr. Martin Luther King …”

  1. And then there are the Black death-row inmates. …

    With the abundance of wrongful convictions out there, humanity may not be in a moral position to comfortably, in-good-conscience dish out life — let alone death — sentences and then ‘throw away the key’.

    For the wrongfully convicted, the system was/is not only flawed, but also corrupt.

    Whenever I hear how relieved people are when someone [usually a male] is charged with a reviled crime — ‘Did they catch him? They did? Well, that’s a relief!’ — I mentally hear the phrase, ‘We’ll give ’im a fair trial, then we’ll hang ’im.’

    And if I point out he may be the wrong guy who’s being railroaded, I could receive the erroneous refrain, ‘Well if he’s truly innocent, he has nothing to worry about.’

    It is also why the news-media should refrain from publishing the identity of people charged with a crime — especially one of a repugnant nature, for which they are jailed pending trial (as is typically done) — until at least after they’ve been convicted.

    ‘Justice system’ vice probably occurs much more frequently than we can ever know about. And I’ve noticed that people tend to naively believe that such ethically challenged courtroom conduct can/will never happen to them.

    Any person’s wrongful charge, trial, conviction and punishment should be concerning to any law-abiding person. However statistically unlikely, the average person could someday find themselves unjustly jailed, even for life.

    Liked by 1 person

    • You make some excellent points here, fgsjr. When I was working on my post-graduate degree I took a class under The Innocence Project. Until then, I was in support of the death penalty, but on learning how many times the innocent are convicted, I did a 180° turn and I no longer support the death penalty under ANY circumstances. Too much room for error.

      Liked by 1 person

      • I basically favor the theoretical life-for-a-life ideology generally behind capital punishment; however, with the plethora of incompetent defense attorneys and wrongful convictions out there — of course only those which death penalty states/nations are willing to publicly acknowledge — humanity is in no moral position to dish out such sentences.

        Although in Canada our government-appointed court justices are also known for wrongful convictions, including for first-degree-murder convictions resulting in life sentences, I can feel my stomach churning when thinking about American justices having to be (re)elected. Albeit we above the 49th parallel have the notorious Milgaard case: An innocent man spent a quarter-century suffering physical and mental cruelty from other convicts as well as from a few guards, all because of a blatantly-wrongful conviction that was in notable part the result of a ‘justice’ system that had been compromised (he at first appealed, but it obviously didn’t help).

        But having elected justices presiding over life-and-death capital-murder trials, who know that their jobs are on the line if their verdicts anger enough of their electorate, one can deduce there’s a greater chance of an innocent person being wrongfully sentenced to death.

        Liked by 1 person

  2. Hi. Jill many have talked about the post, the man it is about, and how it affected the world. I have nothing to add to that aspect, sorry. But on a personal note, one of the things I love so much about your posts is I learn things denied to me growing up. I never knew of this man in any detail or way, he was glossed over in what schooling I had or ignored. I have as you know a spotty education. So your posts like these are grand for me. I learn so much and appreciate so much more I have to learn about the world, history, everything. Thank you. Hugs. Scottie

    Liked by 2 people

    • That makes what I do seem all the more important, Scottie! Thank you so much for letting me know how you’re learning new things from my work! Every now and then I feel like what I do is a waste of time, but you’re proven to me that it isn’t. Thank you so much, my dear friend. Hugs

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Thank you for this lovely tribute, Jill. The most dispiriting aspect of the current backpedaling of progress is that so many white people still feel any effort to assist Black Americans who continue to suffer under the legacy of unjust laws is itself unjustified and is “reverse racism.” The Biden administration has tried to redress the inequities–and has done a wonderful job of diversifying the federal judiciary, which is so important–but some of their attempts have been struck down by the courts. This radical Supreme Court majority, which has ended affirmative action and has practically gutted the Voting Rights Act, is despicable.

    And yet we have Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Vice President Kamala Harris, two strong brilliant Black women (among others), to remind us both how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go.

    Liked by 2 people

    • Thank you, Annie!!! I did … still do … admire Dr. King and many others who fought long and hard to bring civil rights to this country. And today … I am disgusted by those who would take us back to the days of segregated schools, lunch counters, and more. I agree with you 100% about today’s Supreme Court that is reversing civil rights, women’s rights, and more. There is hope for the future, but … we DO have a long way to go and I think that the November election may well decide whether we go the right way or the wrong way.

      Liked by 2 people

  5. A person of Black African ancestry has two uncorrectable problems. They are a member of a small minority and they are recognisable at a distance. It’s not their problem but societies. It wouldn’t be a big problem if society in general would quit scapegoating and just fix what’s broken.🤣
    IMO 80% of race problems would go away by fixing just two things on your list. Quit locking up people for victimless crimes. It doesn’t help any group of people to have it’s leader removed during the critical 8 to 14 formative years. Men like Speaker Don Scott can come out of prison but that is not the majority fate. It is the families and the community that suffers right alongside the prisoner. This is a crime really (GCIV Art. 33). We hear so often of the two tiers of justice, more like the Potemkin Stairs.

    Liked by 2 people

    • Rev. Barber just yesterday in commemorating Dr. King warned of relying on the “great man theory” for reforming society and how MLK was against it. 😉

      Liked by 2 people

      • Hello Richard. I had to look up who Rev Barber was. Once I saw his picture, I was able to remember many things he said on interviews I agreed with. But I think he often has too much faith in fellow US people. He seems to see the best in people rather than to me understanding that many harbor the most harmful feelings, thoughts, and wants in regard to deeds to those different from them. Hugs. Scottie

        Liked by 2 people

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