In one dastardly and desperate act, a man representing racist America took his life.
At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.
One has to ponder; how deeply rooted the feelings of racism have to be in order to motivate a person to actually commit one of the most radical acts a human being can perform: that of taking the life of another.
The aftermath of Martin Luther King’s assassination brought about some change and some progress to America. It was a wakeup call to those living disengaged and on the apathetic fence. While most Americans mourned the loss, others rejoiced and continued on a path that arguably is still with us today: one of racism and inequity, the path to fear and violence, the consecration of xenophobia in front of the altar of ignorance and superstition.
If Martin Luther King were alive today he would on the one hand rejoice to see a black brother finally elected to the highest office in the land but he would also recoil and bend from the heavy weight of the racism that is still embedded in our culture today.
We have a divided country, we have a dysfunctional society and we have a political system that is not working for 98% of the citizens of this nation. Greed and selfishness have created the greatest Plutocracy known to mankind and they are doing their best to exploit those racist feelings, to divide and to instill fear among some members of our society.
“I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
- Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963
"If you give your life to a cause in which you believe, and if it is right and just, and if your life comes to an end as a result of this, then your life could not have been spent in a more redemptive way. I think that is what my husband has done."
- Coretta Scott King, April 9, 1968
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