Martin Luther King Jr. |
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This relevant
reverend's national career began when one small woman, Mrs. Rosa
Parks, firmly said, "No!" to the white driver of a Cleveland
Avenue bus, who ordered her to stand farther back in the Negro section
so a white man could have her seat. That day and place-December
1, 1955, Montgomery, Alabama-are now permanently etched in the epic
of America. A single person's protest against being treated as less
than a human being with equal rights marked the opening of a new
era of social relations in the New World. One woman of courage unknowingly
launched a revolution, for the arrest of Rosa Parks marked the start
of the Movement—the new American revolt for equality for all
citizens. The Moses of this civil rights crusade is the Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr.
Dr. King gave such significant leadership to the nonviolent struggle
against segregation and for the enhancement of the human family
that he was awarded the international Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
His life affirms that relevant religion is protest, protest against
the powers that destroy the individual in American democracy. His
sacred impatience was dramatically expressed to millions upon millions
of people when Dr. King declared to a quarter of a million Americans
assembled at the Lincoln Memorial in the historic 1963 March on
Washington:
I have a dream that my 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 that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to
sing with new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land
of liberty, of thee I sing: Land where my fathers died, land of
the pilgrim's pride, From every mountain side, let freedom ring."
After prophetic action not only for racial equality but also for
freedom for human fulfillment in fighting against the degrading
slums in Chicago, Dr. King vigorously opposed what he viewed as
our nation's unjust Asian war in Vietnam.
Then, the Rev. Martin Luther King, like President Abraham Lincoln
before him, was silenced by the bullet of an assassin.
Now the United States of America officially celebrates his birth
and his ongoing life as a national day of remembrance.
Dr. King's autobiography is STRIDE TOWARD
FREEDOM.
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