Martin Luther King, Rest in Peace

This weekend is MLK weekend, the time when everyone is excited to get a day off work or school for some reason that has something to do with some guy that did some stuff in Atlanta and Birmingham some time ago. But I cannot be too critical. There is a reason we do not understand the true importance of MLK weekend; a reason its "MLK weekend" and not Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. People would be a lot more knowledgable, I think, if Reverend King's legacy had been more perminent; if his message had a firmer hold; if his movement and his vision were still being enacted today.

Rev. King was, arguably, the greatest man to ever grace this country, to toil in the land from sea to shining sea, and to struggle with the irony of being in the land of the (almost) free and the home of the brave. He was not beaten down by his surroundings or his detractors, however. He embraced his situation and held beliefs and visions that were above the dithering and petty issues of his time. Mr. King strove for the idea of Civil Liberty for all people. He wanted to:

Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom 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!"

Unfortunately, Rev. King's vision has been lost. We no longer strive for a nation united, celebrating in its diversity. We no longer live in a countrty in which a neighbor embraces his fellow man as a brother and an equal. And we no longer live for the ideas of liberty and justice.

We have fallen from that path. We have fallen due to our own fear, our own inaction and our own hopelesness.

We no longer look for civil liberty and a union among all Americans. We now settle. We settle to have every individual's heritage, their culture and their faith protected, but hidden. We have created public schools which are open to all but accepting of no one. We have created an environment of individual segregation.

No more are the days of colored seating in the backs of busses, of NINA signs outside east coast businesses and the Chinese Exclusion Act of the late 19th century. Today we are a country of equals, but hardly a nation.

Our people have accepted equality of creed, race and sex and ethnicity, but have failed in the most important party of Reverend King's dream. We have given everyone in this "great" nation of ours unshackled hands in their actions and a free voice in their thoughts, but we have made it impossible for "all of God's Children" to" 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!"