Martin Luther King Day
From Wikipedia.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr., January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using the tactics of nonviolence and civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs and inspired by the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi.
King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, he led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. He also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches, and the following year he and the SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In the final years of his life, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled "Beyond Vietnam".
In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated by James Earl Ray on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. King's death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities. Ray, who fled the country, was arrested two months later at London Heathrow Airport. Ray was sentenced to 99 years in prison for King's murder, and died in 1998 from hepatitis while serving his sentence.
King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states beginning in 1971, and as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor, and a county in Washington State was also rededicated for him. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.
Wow, John, so well stated and, boy, did you nail it. Your thoughts are identical to what I used to hear from my parents growing up. Unfortunately, we have evolved into the "me generation," and it is only getting worse. Thank you for your public service, by the way.
J. Barry | 2018-01-19 06:45:52
Mr. Losch, I am so glad to see your beautiful and true response to this article. It could not of been said any better or more honest and clear. I believe this completely as well. Thank you for writing and being the man you are in this world, great example of sharing your intelligence and humanity.
Kate Foley | 2018-01-19 06:32:53
I am old - 86 years old. I have seen a lot. It is disappointing to see that from the many young and active people of Holliston no one has had a comment about this monument to the American ideal. Martin luther King embodied in his principles and in his action all that represented the continuation of the ideal of our founding fathers. We are losing sight of the purpose of our form of democracy. He wanted us to continually evolve into a more kind and humane society through continuing realization of human wants, needs, and mutual pleasures. "I have a dream." After WW2 my generation became aware of the benefits of acceptance of difference, and the benefits that attitude brought us. The successful end of that war taught us that our "melting pot" spirit had shown that the world was safer, happier, and more secure because our shared ideals were far more important than our abundant differences. We became a community of people, oblivious to our insignificant differences, and in the process we gave inspiration to the world. The emotion of that national success began to blind us as we allowed ourselves to become complaisant, too secure, and selfish. We have slowly and steadily faded away from being the example to the world of what national community gave us ...and people throughout the world who dreamed that they too could be like us. We are letting too much of what Martin Luther King stood for slip away not to be hypocrites if we celebrate his memory without any resolve to restore what he lived and died for.
John Losch | 2018-01-17 19:39:35