![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It is Martin Luther King Jr's birthday today.
I keep meaning to read "Letters from a Birmingham Jail" since I don't really want to be one of thse people that can quote the Dream speech in its entirity (though honestly, I like his last one about seeing the promised land from the mountaintop much better) but don't know much else about the man. And I feel he deserves to be known in a greater way other than a few familiar warm-fuzzy soundbites, groundbreaking though they were at the time, and excuses for chicken joints (and apparently schools?) to have specials. Yes, this happens. The ads are out there. I'll let you google them.
The thing that gets me at this point in my life was that MLK was a human being, not much older than I am right now, who helped fundamentally change the world. Saying he did it singlehandedly discredits all the rest of the people who participated in the civil rights movement, but he seems to make a... friendlier? figurehead than his other contemporaries that got themselves shot for their trouble in the sixties, so I do understand why he gets the holiday. Plus the man gave some excellent, resonant speeches that we all need to review and take to heart if we're going to rescue this world from the shambles its in.
So yeah, I'm taking a moment to acknowledge the man, his oft-quoted Dream, and reflect on the huge debt I owe him and the other freedom fighters of his time. Goodness knows I wouldn't be sitting here in this spot and in this moment, having my life and typing this tribute without them.
I keep meaning to read "Letters from a Birmingham Jail" since I don't really want to be one of thse people that can quote the Dream speech in its entirity (though honestly, I like his last one about seeing the promised land from the mountaintop much better) but don't know much else about the man. And I feel he deserves to be known in a greater way other than a few familiar warm-fuzzy soundbites, groundbreaking though they were at the time, and excuses for chicken joints (and apparently schools?) to have specials. Yes, this happens. The ads are out there. I'll let you google them.
The thing that gets me at this point in my life was that MLK was a human being, not much older than I am right now, who helped fundamentally change the world. Saying he did it singlehandedly discredits all the rest of the people who participated in the civil rights movement, but he seems to make a... friendlier? figurehead than his other contemporaries that got themselves shot for their trouble in the sixties, so I do understand why he gets the holiday. Plus the man gave some excellent, resonant speeches that we all need to review and take to heart if we're going to rescue this world from the shambles its in.
So yeah, I'm taking a moment to acknowledge the man, his oft-quoted Dream, and reflect on the huge debt I owe him and the other freedom fighters of his time. Goodness knows I wouldn't be sitting here in this spot and in this moment, having my life and typing this tribute without them.
