Even today wouldn’t be a day of rest for Dr. King

Vindicator Editorial: January 19, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

It is impossible to mark today’s holiday celebrating the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. without looking ahead one day to the inauguration of Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the United States.

King was the preeminent figure in the modern civil rights movement, although he was given a relatively few years in which to work for his cause.

He was only 39 years old when he was assassinated in 1968, and his early years were devoted to earning bachelor and doctoral degrees. There is no doubt that he always felt strongly about injustices of segregation — a letter to the editor stating the black people “are entitled to the basic rights and opportunities of American citizens” was published in the Atlanta Constitution in 1946, when King was a junior at Morehouse College.

But he did not emerge as a leader in the movement until 1955, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus. And 13 years later, King was dead.

During that short period of time, King chronicled the injustices suffered by black Americans and voice their pain, their hopes and their dreams in some of the greatest speeches ever delivered and some of the most eloquent letters ever written.

He survived an assassination attempt in 1958, was subjected to manhandling, arrest and incarceration, had a home bombed and saw the murder of men, women and children who were caught up in the fight for racial justice.

His dignity and eloquence served him well and he rose to prominence in the civil rights movement and on the world stage quickly. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, a recognition of his consistent commitment to achieving justice through nonviolent means, a strategy he patterned after that of Mahatma Gandhi. He spent a month in India in 1959, talking to disciples of Gandhi.

Always looking forward

In accepting the Peace Prize, King did not talk about what had been accomplished, but what needed to be done.

By 1964, Congress and presidents and supreme court justices had made progress in making racial segregation illegal in the United States. But despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there were still “White only” signs to be found in the South. Those were replaced in the late 1960s with the more subtle “This is Maddox Country” signs, a reference to Lester Maddox, a Georgia governor who sold his restaurant rather than serve black customers.

Throughout his years of activism, King recognized that inequality in the United States was tied to economics even more than race.

And so today, more than 40 years since King’s assassination and 22 years since this day was recognize as a national holiday, much of what Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed about has come to pass. And tomorrow, something he may not have even dared to dream will come to be when Barack Obama is sworn in as president of the United States.

That will happen within site of the steps on which King gave his “I have a Dream” speech in 1963. But it will also be within the District of Columbia, a municipality that has — like large and small cities throughout the nation — a disproportionate share of poor, under-educated, unskilled and unemployed black residents. And as long as that disparity is a fact — regardless of why it exists or whom we choose to blame — Dr. King’s dream will remain unfulfilled.

Mark today by remembering, celebrate the historic events of tomorrow, but know that there is work yet to be done in the name of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the days and years to follow.