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Martin Luther King Jr. Day isn't about you
It's a day to celebrate others, and improve us
MLK image
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers a speech to a crowd of approximately 7,000 people on May 17, 1967 at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza in Berkeley, California (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

On Monday, Americans will celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We’re told it’s a day to remember a man who shared a dream that inspired our nation: to bring justice where there is injustice, freedom where there is oppression, peace where there is violence and opportunity where there is poverty.

A Baptist minister and social activist who led the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s, King was born on Jan. 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He died April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King rose to national prominence as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which promoted nonviolent tactics, such as the massive March on Washington in 1963. His leadership was fundamental to ending the legal segregation of Black Americans in the United States. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

His famous “I Have a Dream” speech was delivered on Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It began: “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.”

Slavery was supposed to have ended after the Civil War. King shared the unpopular truth of the 1960s:

“But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check.

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men – yes, Black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

It was a promissory note on which the nation had defaulted, King said, insofar as its people of color were concerned.

“Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.”

Most of us have heard and been uplifted by the “I have a dream” part of the speech: “I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. ... I have a dream that my four 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 today.”

Less familiar are the parts of the speech that admitted the dream had not yet come true; that the promissory was still bouncing due to sufficient funds of goodwill, fairness and decency.

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. ...

“I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. ...

“This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”

This Martin Luther King Jr. Day needs to be about us admitting the minorities and “others” among us are as deserving of the American dream as the rest of us. That oasis of freedom and justice can’t be only a mirage or a dream – can it?