In Memory Of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on Jan. 15th, 1929 in Georgia to a Christian family. Like his father, he was a baptist preacher and civil rights activist; Yet more still than that, he was a revolutionary.
Dr. King was born to Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams. His father, generally known for his ministerial work, was also a civil rights activist, having stormed out of a shoe store with his son after being ordered to the back of the store, and led a boycott of the Atlanta bus system, playing an instrumental role in ending the Jim Crow laws that defined the era. It was the Jim Crow laws that enforced the segregation of the bus routes that Rosa Parks defied when she refused to remove herself from her seat for a white man. One of Dr. Kings early political actions was to join her, in the tradition of his father, and likewise boycott the Montgomery bus system.
Unlike many on the ideological left today, Dr. King had no problem reconciling the Christian faith, and his politically egalitarian views. They were intertwined in his speeches, his sermons, his political activism, and his life. He believed that a law was an immoral law if it was not in keeping "the moral law or the law of God", and in another statement referring to civil disobedience as an obligation when the law itself was immoral. King indeed held the belief that "all men are created equal, [being] endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights". It was those rights for which he incessantly fought.
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Dr. King was an activist. From the aforementioned Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, he made equality his life's work. In 1963, when he was 34, he led one of the most influential campaigns against racial and economic justice in the civil rights movement. It was during these protests that we find some of the most iconic and troubling images of the movement, as police used dogs, fire hoses, and billy clubs on protesters. He was jailed, and denied his right to an attorney, where he wrote his now famous letter from the Birmingham jail.
Dr. King was a revolutionary. Branded "not safe for all political stripes" by "The Atlantic", he was a critic of materialism (all too relevant today), war, and capitalism. He is quoted as saying that "capitalism has outlived its usefulness", and long before our modern campaigns of endless war, he branded the US government "the greatest purveyor of violence throughout the world". He noteably stated that "America must move toward Democratic Socialism".
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The Democratic Party, and indeed all of us, would do well on Dr. Kings birthday, to celebrate all aspects of his life, and his death, as we envision a future of, by, and for the people. He, unlike the church of today, was a follower of the egalitarian principles taught by Jesus. He, unlike the political parties of today, was an advocate of true social and economic change; And he, unlike most of the movements of today, was an activist that would stop at nothing to continuously pressure the establishment to represent all Americans. Long live his legacy!