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Monday, January 21, 2002
During his lifetime, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't the kind of revolutionary America wanted to take home to mother.
If someone had told him that his life would warrant recognition as a national holiday one day -- and that Ronald Reagan would sign the legislation making it possible -- he would have been flabbergasted.
Today, Dr. King is universally respected and appreciated in all but the most bigoted circles. But it wasn't always thus. His ideas about racial equality and justice were viewed with deep suspicion by most Americans in the turbulent middle decades of the last century.
To march for racial justice then was to suggest that the status quo was unjust. Dr. King didn't hesitate to identify racial injustice as antithetical to this nation's highest ideals and contrary to the spirit upon which it was founded.
To march for workers' rights in the 1950s and '60s was to question corporate America's sense of fair play. Dr. King considered the right to unionize a sacred right. For this position, too, he was branded a dangerous agitator.
To speak out against the Vietnam War as Dr. King did at the beginning of the anti-war movement was to question the legitimacy of America's Cold War policies and assumptions. For this, he was dubbed a Communist sympathizer and put under surveillance by his own government.
When Dr. King was assassinated 34 years ago in Memphis by a gunman motivated by racial hatred, equality lost its greatest spokesperson, but not its moral imperative.
It took a few more years, but the nation eventually recognized the wisdom of Dr. King's dream.
Today we embrace many of his ideas as the epitome of virtue, liberty and commonsense.
Though once considered politically seditious, Dr. King's ideas have been rehabilitated. Even children are encouraged to emulate his example. Still, things aren't perfect in America. Not all of Dr. King's ideas have been taken to heart.
Still, a holiday in honor of a man who was deeply misunderstood in his own time is a at least a sign that the things he stood for are considered in step with American values. This is remarkable when you consider that less than a generation ago, Dr. King was viewed by too many Americans as an enemy of the people.