The following is a copy of an article I wrote that was published in a local newspaper’s January edition, in recognition of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday:
“It was a warm day in September 1962 that my husband Bob and I began our journey by train from California to Louisiana. We had arranged to meet my parents at the New Orleans railroad station and then go with them to a French Quarter hotel where we had room reservations. At the same time that Bob and I were riding on the train, they were driving from their home in Washington, DC. We planned to spend a few days sightseeing before we all headed to Florida in Dad’s car for a reunion with my brother, his wife Jane, and their two young sons.
Our train eventually clanked its way to the New Orleans station. Once inside, Bob headed towards a sign marked ‘Waiting Room,’ where he was met with a big shock. I had neglected to tell him that there were two waiting rooms—one for ‘whites’ and one for ‘colored.’ He had mistakenly gone to the wrong one. When I caught up with him, I pointed out that even the drinking fountains are segregated.
‘Those are just a couple examples of how people of color are discriminated against in the Deep South,’ I told him. Bob was born and raised in Europe, and this was his first visit to that part of the United States. ‘They’re also barred from certain restaurants and must sit in the backs of buses,’ I said.Bob responded by saying, ‘How unfortunate.’
This decades-old treatment of black citizens was especially disheartening to Martin Luther King Jr., a black man born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. Because he grew up in this segregated city, he experienced firsthand the injustice of racism. He later became an ordained Baptist minister and served as pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama.
Reverend King was driven to help stamp out segregation by ‘meeting physical force with soul force,’ as he called it. To that end, in the mid-1950s he became leader of the Civil Rights Movement. A major victory for the Movement occurred in 1955 when a fellow civil rights advocate and Montgomery resident, Rosa Parks, was arrested for not giving up her bus seat to a white person. After her arrest, he met with her to plan a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. The boycott lasted 385 days and ended when the United States District Court ruled to end segregation on all Montgomery public buses.
This positive outcome encouraged Reverend King to promote peaceful civil disobedience. He believed success in ending segregation could be achieved by using non-violent means, such as sit-ins at restaurants, marches, speeches and boycotts. He felt that by doing so, black people could conquer injustice while still maintaining their dignity.
Because of his efforts, the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum and rolled onward like a powerful stream. During the march on Washington in 1963, which drew thousands of his supporters, he gave his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. Here are excerpts:
‘And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.’
‘I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’
‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’
Reverend King played a large role in ending legal segregation and creating the Civil Rights Act, which President Johnson signed into law in 1964. That same year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite his immense success, he gained many foes who were opposed to civil rights. At his hotel in Memphis, he was assassinated in 1968 by one of those enemies of freedom. Reverend King was only 39 years old.
In 1983 Congress declared every third Monday in January to be Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This holiday falls on or near his birthday and is a well-deserved tribute to a man who died much too soon.”
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