Let’s Hail The King!
A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
By Alex Redd
The Perspective
Atlanta, Georgia
January 19, 2004
The American society is becoming more culturally diversified after years
of racial discrimination and social injustice. Violence and racial segregation
in transportation facilities, public accommodations, hiring practices
and voting rights characterized past centuries. There were stringent
laws in some states barring colored people from many activities.
Such social injustice and maltreatment experienced mainly by blacks
has now been reduced through the relentless efforts of one of America’s
greatest civil rights leaders. His vision and dream to make America
a better place for all, despite color, race and ethnic and religious
backgrounds, have paved the way for social change and national unity
in American society.
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. clearly defined the true meaning of
courage, perseverance and good leadership ability. King’s activism
for social justice and freedom vividly illustrated his courage in pursuing
nonviolence through peaceful demonstrations and passive resistance in
the face of guns, fire horses, police dogs and police brutality.
What does it feel like when a gun is pointed at you? How does it feel
when a 40-mile-an hour water spray knocks one down to the pavement?
What if huge, vicious German shepherd dogs are snarling and snapping
at you? It would be easy to fight back. It is more courageous to be
passive.
King’s home was firebombed. He was arrested and jailed many times.
Yet he urged positive, nonviolent action, a strategy he borrowed from
Gandhi’s successful effort to free India from British rule. King
never wavered in his quest for freedom and social justice despite many
threats on his life. He always persevered.
Can you imagine leaving your family at home to deliver 208 speeches
within one year?
King’s messages of love, freedom, peace and national unity through
his writings and speeches spread like a wide fire throughout the South,
West and East of America as well as the world over. His training as
a preacher and his innate eloquence did much to further his cause. Never
was his astute leadership ability more apparent than when he galvanized
national opinion to march on Washington D.C.
It was a hot, sweltering summer in 1963 when a gigantic turnout of more
than 250,000 people swamped the nation’s capital for a peaceful
demonstration to further the cause of equal justice for African Americans.
King, sharply dressed in a dark business suit, majestically walked to
the podium to deliver his prophetic and moving “ I Have a Dream”
speech. That speech and other efforts to integrate American society
stirred the nation’s conscience, contributing directly to the
enactment of landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s.
Jesse Jackson, one of his closest aides, once said, “The denial
of human rights anywhere is a threat to human rights everywhere. Injustice
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” King’s dream
to unite us as one people still lives on. So let’s think for a
moment and reflect on the great effort of this man whose ideals and
thoughts have had worldwide approval. This man paved the way for American
society to be more culturally unified despite color, race, ethnic background
and religious affiliations.
As we can see in our society today, African Americans and other minority
groups are participants in our national political, social and economic
structures. Martin Luther King Jr., an advocate, writer, teacher, preacher
and true freedom fighter, deserves credit for his struggle to eliminate
the disease of racism that has plagued American society for too many
years. Let’s hail the King! Free at last, free at last!
The author, Alex Redd, is a former recipient of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship at the University of Wisconsin---Madison in 2000.
