MLK Day

Today is the anniversary of celebration of MLK, his life, his message and his death. As I have been reading and thinking about it today, I wondered..."How many people that celebrate him today really understand who he was, what his message was and what he would say to our country today?"
I am not an MLK expert and neither would I dare to put words into his mouth about what he might say to America today. But I do think he would be proud to have a black man about to be inaugurated for the 1st time in our history. I do think he would caution and counsel that man about some of the positions and moves he desires to make for our great nation. I do think he would continue to challenge our whole nation to rise out of this self loving, careless, destructive lack or morality and justice to become the nation we have the potential to be. I am going to continue to ponder this today and as history is made tomorrow.

Here are some powerful quotes for you to think on too:

I am aware that there are many who wince at a distinction between property and persons--who hold both sacrosanct. My views are not so rigid. A life is sacred. Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on; it is not man. The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true. Strength To Love, 1963.

Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy. The Measures of Man, 1959.

The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority. Strength to Love, 1963.

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live. Speech, Detroit, Michigan, June 23, 1963.

To be a Negro in America is to hope against hope. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.