Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Remembrance

This past Monday marked Martin Luther King Day, celebrating the great civil rights leader's life and actions.

Born in 1929 to a middle-class family in Memphis, Tennessee, King was, from his birth, immersed in the early civil rights movement. His father, Martin Luther King Sr. was, in addition to his work as a prominent Baptist minister, both the head of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP a dedicated activist against Jim Crowe laws, and instilled in his son values of equality, human dignity, and a staunch rejection of apathy in the face of systemic injustice. The younger King followed in his father's footsteps, becoming the pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1954. A year later, King became deeply involved in the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott, helping lead the movement after Claudette Colvin and, a few months later, her more famous counterpart Rosa Parks, refused to give up their bus seats for white passengers. While, after over a year of boycotting the bus system, a district court eventually created a ruling ending segregation on the city's public transit, King was both arrested and his house was bombed because of his involvement in the bus boycott. Despite this, King's commitment to the civil rights movement only increased, and in 1957 he became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, an organization formed for the coordination of black churches in combating segregation and racism. Heavily influenced by Gandhi, Tolstoy, Thoreau, and Bayard Rustin (an early advocate of gay rights), King utilized techniques of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience, organizing marches, rallies, and sit-ins across the south. King further led the iconic "March on Washington" in 1963, calling for an end not only to racial segregation, but listing such demands as better minimum wage, protection for civil rights workers and protestors from excessive force at the hands of the police, and laws serving as protection from racial discrimination in the workplace. Resulting from these campaigns was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the same year King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) and, a year later, the  Voting Rights Act of 1965, effectively outlawing discriminatory practices in voting (such as literacy test requirements), as well as dissolving segregation laws in schools, public facilities, and in the workplace.

Not satisfied with these victories, King began to focus his attentions not simply on the task of attacking racism and bigotry, but began to expand his efforts to advocating on behalf of the poor and the exploited, even going so far as to call for economic reform. He said, "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar...it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." Further, King became an increasingly outspoken critic of the U.S.'s involvement in the Vietnam War, claiming that America was hypocritically supporting the Diem regime encapsulating the antithesis of American values, claiming "…This is a little known fact, these people declared themselves independent in 1945, they quoted our Declaration of Independence in their document of freedom…But instead the United States came and started supporting a man named Diem, who turned out to be one of the most ruthless dictators in the history of the world. He set out to silence all opposition, people were brutally murdered merely because they raised their voices…." Indeed, in 1968, King led the organization of the "Poor People's Campaign," aimed at addressing and combating problems of economic injustice, and in demanding government support for communities suffering from poverty. Later that year, King traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to voice support for a strike conducted by garbage workers, delivering his famous "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech the day before his assassination on the balcony of his room in the Lorraine Motel. A small-time criminal named James Earl Ray, caught attempting to leave Heathrow airport, initially confessed to the murder of King; however, eventually recanted and claimed to be innocent -- even gaining support from the King family.

Despite King's untimely death at the age of 39, his work lives on. King's campaigns have been cited as an influence on the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and even today the philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience championed by King  have been adopted countless protests today, from the nonviolent demonstrations outside the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999, to the contemporary Occupy Movements, claiming inspiration from the sit-ins of the 1960s. While it cannot be denied that there is still much to be done in achieving King's dream for equality and human dignity, regardless of race or social standing, perhaps we may take comfort in King's final sentiment. "We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words…we just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, ‘God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating His children right.'"