Throughout the history of our world, there comes a person every few decades or so who challenges traditional values, breaks through barriers, brings people together, and helps creates a better world.  Dr. Martin Luther King was one of those people. 

            This week we celebrate what would have been his 81st birthday.  Dr. King’s accomplishments speak for themselves.  Borrowing from the ideals of Gandhi and other human rights leaders, he helped create the U.S. Civil Rights movement, promoting equal rights between peoples of all colours and religious backgrounds.  Along with labour unions and other equal rights organizations, he led the March on Washington in 1963, where hundreds of thousands of people listened to his dream for a better America.

            “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.  I have a dream today!”  This wasn’t just a speech.  It was poetry.

            A year later, Dr. King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and discrimination.  He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, and a national holiday was established in his name in 1986.

            It is important to realize that the Civil Rights Movement didn’t start with the March on Washington.  Believe it or not, it began with very small groups of people in Church basements in the U.S. South, which really goes to show that it only takes a handful of people to start a movement that can change the world. 

            Also important are the other values that Dr. King stood for, many of which are ignored or forgotten by historians and journalists.  First and foremost, he believed in peace and was a rigorous opponent of the Vietnam War.  One doesn’t have to be a history professor to realize what he would have thought of the Iraq War if he were alive today.  King also believed in the rights of workers and the poor, and that everyone should have access to a good paying job, health care, education, housing and other necessities of life.  As the Civil Rights leaders used to say in the 1960s, let’s keep our eyes on the prize.

            Today, King is considered one of the greatest Americans in history.  Yet during his life, he received criticism from people in positions of power and privilege, many of whom labelled him “radical” or “revolutionary.”  Sounds familiar?  It’s some of the same rhetoric thrown at President Barack Obama, an advocate for social justice and equality in his own right. 

            The link between Dr. King and President Obama today is very strong.  As one writer put it, “Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King Jr. could march so Obama could run so the children of tomorrow can fly.”  It illustrates our need to continue the work of Dr. King and all those who came before him so that one day, we really will see his dream become reality.  

Dr. King said:

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

A lie cannot live.

A man can’t ride your back unless it’s bent.

A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

A right delayed is a right denied.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

A riot is the language of the unheard.
 

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
 

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

We must use time creatively.

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

 Author: Bilal Rajan