Martin Luther King, Jr.
He helped us become a better people, and a more just nation. He actually changed my life, though he never knew it.
It was his “I Have A Dream” speech that did it. I was 18 years old at the time, heading off to college. I walked through the room that happened to have the television on showing the March on Washington. He was just starting.
No one else was in the room. I stood watching for a few minutes, and then realized I had sat down on the edge of the sofa. I guess I was initially interested because my hometown paper said this man I knew little about was a Communist agitator, a troublemaker out to destroy America.
But listening to his speech (it sounded like a sermon to me) I was completely captivated by his words. His language was beautiful, almost poetic, even to a young kid like me, clear, and not at all threatening.
What he was saying sounded perfectly reasonable to me. When he finished the crowd went wild, and I remember wondering why anyone would not agree with what he had said.
But they didn’t. Not one bit, in fact. My hometown paper attacked everything he said, and warned of the trouble he would continue to stir up in cities like ours and all around the South.
As a young minister only a few years later I came face to face with people who shared those views, and witnessed how mean and ugly people can be to one another, even hearing more than once someone say they wish somebody would kill that N…, and, of course, they did.
Today the nation remembers the great contributions of this man who was so very young at the time, but I think it is just as important for us to remember that there was little such sentiment across the nation among whites at the time he lived.
My racist hometown newspaper was like thousands of others all around the country, and especially in the Deep South. Dr. King was vilified far more than venerated during his life time.
It is in his death that he has come to be remembered for what he truly was in life…a man of God whom history chose to lead our nation to realize that liberty and justice for all had to mean “all” if it meant anything…
a man who was willing to give his last measure in service to a righteous cause…
a man who rose to great heights because he chose to practice the ethic of love toward all…
Today, then, is not a holiday for some of us. It is a day to remember the birthday of a special man…
a man whose life, far too short, lives on in the minds and hearts of those of us whose lives he changed by being who he was.
And that fact makes me offer this simple prayer, “Thank God Almighty for Martin Luther King, Jr.”
linnposts.com 
AMEN.
Yes…..AMEN
Thanks for this. In response to your previous post on Selma and the controversial portrayal of LBJ, would like to recommend you read an op-ed by John Lewis in LA Times on Jan. 16. Should be able to find at http://www.latimes..com. All my friends of color who have seen the movie found it powerful and truthful, despite the perhaps misleading portrayal of a resistant LBJ. Along with very emotional responses to it many of them have also posted articles and speeches by LBJ to help set the record straight in regard to his actual support of civil rights reform during his presidency. However, it is important to note that records show he did indeed vote against all civil rights reform for 15-20 years before he became president. Like virtually all of us white people, he obviously went through an evolutionary process to get to that point of active support. I read a commentary by another African American writer, can’t remember who, that stated they felt like perhaps the director of Selma wanted to insure that unlike all too often is the case, white people couldn’t try to make the claim that this important historical event and change had to have a white savior or it would never have been accomplished. Having worked intraculturally for 30 years, I have seen that tendency far too often as I worked in community development and healthcare for a number of Christian organizations. I tend to agree that far too often communities of color get little of the credit for historical and current day change they accomplish so I have no problem watching a movie that keeps that makes the success of the black community it’s focus. Hope you will decide to see this timely film.
Amen one more time
Beautiful, Jan. Thank you!
Monica and I saw “Selma” yesterday and liked it. Then we came home and watched “Democracy Now”. Their Dr.King special was to broadcast his December 7th, 1964 speech in London, three days before he received the Nobel Peace Prize. It was nearly an hour long and an eloquent and educational piece of oratory. I was really taken not just by its content but at his delivery! Not an “Ahh” or “Umm” anywhere! He went fluidly from one sentence to the next, one topic to another; such grace! Miss him!
Amen.