Allow Changes Introduced By Martin Luther King To Continue

While it is certainly true that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a great black leader and speaker capable of great inspiration who brought about important changes for black Americans, that is not why we celebrate a national holiday in his honor. We honor him because he stirred our entire nation to re-examine the very principles of democracy on which our country was founded. He challenged us, in some cases, to make our behavior live up to our laws and, in other cases, to make our laws live up to the high ideals of our democracy, embraced in the phrase, “liberty and justice for all.”

The cornerstone of American democracy, beginning with the Revolution of 1776, is that blind obedience is unacceptable. Democracy is not an institution but a dynamic process. That is why our Constitution has been amended 27 times. Democracy does not reside solely in Washington, D.C., but in the hearts of all Americans. The true foot soldiers of democracy wear no uniforms. They are students and teachers. They are masons and carpenters, astronauts and homemakers. They build ships and cook tacos, design cities and sweep halls. We sometimes forget that. We tend to become comfortable with the status quo. Dr. King reminded us that we are greater than that. He urged us to exercise muscles we had not used in a long time - a painful process to be sure, but a process essential for a healthy democracy.

Consider this: by galvanizing the poorest, least educated, least powerful group of citizens in our country to take courageous action, he forced the entire nation to examine the issues they placed before us - and the most powerful nation on Earth heeded the calls of its weakest citizens and changed both its laws and its behavior. He enabled the Americans of his era to breathe the breath of greatness. That is Martin Luther King’s gift to us today. If we can continue to set our sights higher, to further hone the concept of justice, to enhance the meaning of freedom, to continue to participate in our democracy, we can continue to be a great people, and America can continue to be a great nation.