A tribute to MLK

Martin Luther King Jr. 
The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

We celebrate him today in America. He is world famous, but he is indisputably one of us.

He was an American. He was a citizen like you and me. He is an American founding father like Washington. He is a redeemer of the American Revolution like Lincoln and Douglass. He is an American martyr like his peers John and Robert Kennedy, who were murdered by hatred, while leading the country over the next rise towards the place that Martin Luther King would see first.

What was that place?

Others spoke and dreamed about that place, but they couldn’t quite imagine it into clear description. They were guided towards a destination that was rooted in belief that the ideals of the country would prevail over the brutality of whatever moment of injustice temporarily prevailed. This belief was rooted in the faith that American justice and progress march inexorably forward. This is what Lafayette believed. He believed the American Revolution and the principles of American liberty would eventually end slavery, colonialism and repression because the power of liberty could not be contained.

Lincoln spoke of it at Gettysburg with a grim determination and resolve that the United States of America would be what it proclaimed itself to be.

Franklin Roosevelt talked about it when he delivered his epic speech on freedom that endures as the “Four Freedoms” speech.

John Kennedy talked about it when he spoke before the Massachusetts legislature as president elect.

John Winthrop talked about it in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but Martin Luther King of Atlanta, Georgia, born in 1929, was the first to see it and tell us about it.

The speech was delivered on April 3, 1968. I would encourage you to watch it today:

It is one of the most important speeches in American history. It was Martin Luther King’s last sermon. His hour of death was approaching, and there can be no doubt that he knew his fate as surely as Christ did 2,000 years before. His speech is a prophetic vision. In it, he journeys throughout history to the edge of his own mortality and beyond to declare that he has seen the just society that exists from the mountain top over which he has singularly peered. He led his people to the edge of a new era during which the fulfillment of the American Revolution is at hand. He speaks as a man with ambition, love and hopes for a long life. He expresses his indifference towards all things because he declares his certainty that all of the sacrifices and deprivation will lead to the proverbial promised land, which is what the civil rights movement was about.

When you watch the speech look at the serenity that falls on Dr. King. Look at grace fall upon him as he rises to an altitude of clear vision that no American before or since has reached. Observe his certainty around America’s ultimate destiny.

Dr. King is one of the greatest Americans who has ever lived. He is a champion of human rights, freedom, democracy and liberty. His memory will endure as long as America does.

He was a moral giant and the evidence of that is this letter. It is among the most important documents in the American canon. It is one of the most important letters that has ever been written. It was written from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama. Please read it.

The celebration of Martin Luther King’s life is a day on which the sacrifices that expanded freedom are remembered. Martin Luther King has taken his place on the National Mall. He will endure there for eternity as a reminder of the triumph of justice and love over oppression and hate.

Dr. King is an icon and a legend. He was a Black man from Atlanta. He was a preacher with a PhD. He was a Nobel laureate. He was a husband and a father.

He was an American. We should all be proud of that.