Since it official designation as a national holiday, the January 15 birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been celebrated throughout the nation on the third Monday of January with marches, speeches and various other symbolic observances other symbolic observances. It is ironic that most of the wisdom and sacrifices of this eloquent orator and civil rights martyr are basically unknown and the name Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has become synonymous with the dream referred to in only one of his countless speeches, his immortal “I Have A Dream” speech delivered August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial during the nation’s first massive protest march on Washington against segregation.
Webster defines dreams as being of two kinds: one, a series of thoughts, image and feelings that come to a person during sleep; the other an “imaginary vision” while awake. The latter described the motivated thrust behind Dr. King’s sacrificial life and subsequent cause of his death that attracted worldwide attention to this nation’s fraudulent claim of “liberty and justice for all,” as stated in its Pledge of Allegiance.
The former definition, however, more adequately describes the reality of too many ceremonial annual observances with too little offered in between toward materialization of the dream (or vision).
Following a few successful landmark court battles that gave many the illusion that “we had overcome,” we fell asleep at the switch and in our deep slumber failed to notice the increasing numbers of Black high school dropouts, the RE-segregation of public schools that had been desegregated or to monitor and at least maintain the legal, academic and economic strides made through the successive efforts of Dr. King and his predecessors.
While slumbering at the switch, we also fail to recognize the new face of segregation and dehumanization promoted through major network television programming and the overt new wave of immorality and violence that transcend former, more obvious racial and cultural boundaries.
There are innumerable other sung and unsung heroes and heroines who have been and continue to be primary instruments through which must come the long prophesied peace on earth, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heave,” as promised by His Holiness Christ.
An instrument, defined by Webster as a tool, utensil or other implement by which something is done, is also of two kinds – animate (to give spirit lie and courage and support), and inanimate (dead, unendow with life or spirit).
“Now the judgment of God is upon us,” Dr. King states in another speech, “and we must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.”
We are the animate instruments of God through which world peace must and will inevitable come; we are reminded in the Baha’i Holy Writings. The Supreme Artificer is God.
It’s time to wake up Black America! We have not overcome. It’s time to stop dreaming and start marching to a different drummer. Time to recognize the fact that “The responsibility for the achievement of racial peace and unity in the United States rests upon both Black and White Americans.”
It’s time to wake up White America and hear the appeal to all individual Americans as “The transformation of the whole nation ultimately depends on the initiative and change of character of the individuals who compose it,” according to the Baha’i Holy Writings.
Investigate!
