MLK Day-2011
Thinking about Martin Luther King, Jr. –on the eve of his actual birthday on January 15, 1929– I came across the presentation speech given when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. In it, Gunnar Jahn, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, said of Dr, King:
He is the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle can be waged without violence. He is the first to make the message of brotherly love a reality in the course of his struggle, and he has brought this message to all men, to all nations and races.
Today we pay tribute to Martin Luther King, the man who has never abandoned his faith in the unarmed struggle he is waging, who has suffered for his faith, who has been imprisoned on many occasions, whose home has been subject to bomb attacks, whose life and the lives of his family have been threatened, and who nevertheless has never faltered.
On Monday January 17, 2011, Dr. King's life will be marked by a federal holiday (3d Monday in January) celebrating his life and achievements. It is now a day that many try and set aside as a Day of Service in honor of Dr. King's memory. The "Dream Speech" will be televised and talked about.
But Martin Luther King's Dream seems very far away after Tucson. (It is perhaps worth noting that Arizona was a state in which the newly-elected Governor Evan Mecham revoked the state's King holiday in 1987 and it was only reinstated after a national outcry and the NFL pulled the Super Bowl from its Arizona site in 1993.)
According to a recent poll, as reported on National Public Radio, "
Despite having their first black president, Americans are no more certain than before that the country is closer to the racial equality preached by Martin Luther King Jr.
The killings in Tucson and the ugly wash of words that have unfortunately followed in their wake seem to have left little room for thoughts of Martin Luther King –also gunned down by an assassin. But his fundamental ideas are always worth remembering, particularly in the face of this deadly violence.
These words come from his Nobel lecture:
Nonviolence has also meant that my people in the agonizing struggles of recent years have taken suffering upon themselves instead of inflicting it on others. It has meant, as I said, that we are no longer afraid and cowed. But in some substantial degree it has meant that we do not want to instill fear in others or into the society of which we are a part. The movement does not seek to liberate Negroes at the expense of the humiliation and enslavement of whites. It seeks no victory over anyone. It seeks to liberate American society and to share in the self-liberation of all the people.
