Schools, banks, government offices and many businesses are closed today to observe the national holiday that marks the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a towering figure in the cavalcade of U.S. history. Though some still debate the wisdom of a day to honor the man whose words and leadership permanently altered the social fabric of the nation, the holiday observance is appropriate.
It was Dr. King who was the catalyst of an emerging civil rights movement in the United States. It was Dr. King whose peaceful, but insistent, demand for equality roused the collective conscious of a nation of ultimately fair-minded citizens and prompted them to right a wrong that was a stain on a country that purported to honor but not always practice the revolutionary notion that all men are created equal.
It was Dr. King, as well, whose soaring oratory and high visibility engaged people of all ages, colors and creeds in what become a potent drive to end the ferocious and institutionalized segregation that was the shame of the United States. And it was Dr. King who was the leader of the veritable but nonviolent army that ultimately defeated the dark forces within the nation that suppressed the principles of individual freedom and human equality even as they paid lip service to the documents that famously guaranteed those rights.
Dr. King, who would have turned 81 last Friday, put it succinctly in a less-quoted part of his memorable “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.
“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir,” he said. “This note was a promise that all men, yes black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.”
His belief was well-founded. It wasn’t easy then, and it’s not easy now, but the United States continues to make progress toward the time when the world envisioned by Dr. King — a time when children would not be “judged by the color of their skin but by their content of their character” — is more fact than fiction. That journey, though, is not finished.
There has been significant progress, though. America’s first black president sits in the White House. Many individuals of color are now an integral part of the nation’s social, civic, economic and political mainstream. That is, in part, a direct legacy of Dr. King and those who heeded his call to action. Much, though, remains to be done.
More than a third of black and Hispanic children live in poverty in the United States. And while 72 percent of the nation’s white students and 79 percent of its Asian students graduate from high school, only slightly more than 50 percent of black and Hispanic children do so. Clearly, equality is an elusive goal for many.
Dr. King’s dream for this nation, however, remains viable. It is a tribute to him and his life’s work that we as a nation and as individuals still find pursuit of it a worthy goal.