Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

by John Hartvigsen

It has been argued that holidays are made up events that lose their meaning and become excuses for shopping, getting out of school and taking a day off from work.  While these may be welcome opportunities, they miss the specific reasons that individual holidays were created.

Since Martin Luther King, Jr. died more than fifty years ago, only “older” American’s may remember the life and achievements of this man. 

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day serves two main purposes: first to remind the mature and second to teach the young.  In a nation and a world divided and polarized by discords and hatreds, we remember King’s dream:

When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last!   Free at last!  Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”   

Among, many quotes that express Dr. King’s proposed solution to the world’s problems and calamities one thought stands out:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

The world and the United States need more than ever the messages and example of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.