Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. day.
A day to observe and remember a man, who wound up on the wrong end of a gun and was so tragically and prematurely ripped from the fabric of American culture some 40 years ago.
It would be an absolute disservice to ourselves, and to the memory of Dr. King, if his murder were all we remembered about him on this day. The day is not to commemorate his death, it is meant to celebrate his life. A life lived… and given attempting to free a people from the yokes of repression, segregation and inequality.
The price he paid while searching for the realization of his dreams, as well as those of so many others, though tragic, appears to have not been in vain – for tomorrow, with the swearing in of our nations first black president, we will witness a realization of those dreams in a way that many of us thought we would never live to see.
I am beside myself with the reality of it.
While Barack Obama has yet to spend a minute as the leader of the free world at the time of this writing, and being a politician we would be a bit foolish to anoint him a savior or a saint just yet, he is the embodiment of someone whose success is directly a result of their diligence, intelligence and articulate ability. When this is combined with his apparent reality and understanding of people and his ability to communicate with them, it places him on an eloquent plateau similar or equal to that of the great civil rights leaders who came before him.
Call him what you may now with an understanding it may bear little resemblance to what history will call him in the coming years. This is a very exciting time to be alive, to witness dramatic change and to reflect on those who came before us… who paved the way for the changes we have been so fortunate to witness.
I will certainly be waiting and watching.
It is with that being said that I re-link to an article I published back in May of 2006. It was hopeful then, an inspirational to some, and one of the things I reflect on a little now as I pull up a ringside seat to some long overdue history in this country. If you’ve never read it before, go ahead and look it over. So many of its words seem to ring a little more true right now…
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