Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr day is not only a day of service and day to honor the heros of the Civil Rights Movement, but also to remember and examine the words of Dr. King. Here are a few of my favorite thinkers reflecting on Dr. King’s legacy:
Jay Smooth @ ill doctrine:
Dwight Furrow @ Rants and Reasons:
It is fashionable to sneer at Obama’s appeal to “hope” during his campaign. But that is all liberals have because it supports the will to persist. Conservatives have the power and money. All we have is hope that through extraordinary effort some injustice can be removed.
That is Dr. King’s legacy.
Pam Spaulding @ Pam’s House Blend remembering one of our less-known heros, Mr. Bayard Rustin:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s hallowed “I Have a Dream Speech” is an iconic moment in the history of civil rights. But this historic moment would probably have never happened if it weren’t for a man standing in King’s shadow, Mr. Bayard Rustin.
Bayard Rustin was a man with a number of seemingly incompatible labels: black, gay, Quaker… identifications that served to earn him as many detractors as admirers. Although he had numerous passions and pursuits, his most transformative act, one that certainly changed the course of American history, was to counsel MLK on the use of non-violent resistance. Rustin also helped to engineer the March on Washington and frame the Montgomery bus boycott.
President Obama In Remembrance of Martin Luther King, Jr.:
Our predecessors were never so consumed with theoretical debates that they couldn’t see progress when it came. Sometimes I get a little frustrated when folks just don’t want to see that even if we don’t get everything, we’re getting something. (Applause.) King understood that the desegregation of the Armed Forces didn’t end the civil rights movement, because black and white soldiers still couldn’t sit together at the same lunch counter when they came home. But he still insisted on the rightness of desegregating the Armed Forces. That was a good first step — even as he called for more. He didn’t suggest that somehow by the signing of the Civil Rights that somehow all discrimination would end. But he also didn’t think that we shouldn’t sign the Civil Rights Act because it hasn’t solved every problem. Let’s take a victory, he said, and then keep on marching. Forward steps, large and small, were recognized for what they were — which was progress.
Thank you, Dr. King, for your wisdom and sacrifice and for the chance to learn from such a powerful legacy decades later.
