Today is Not Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Yes, I know today is NOT MLK Day, but I've got to do this post before I can blog about Tuesday's inauguration. By the way, give yourself a prize if you can find 'Ken Loyd's Eclectic Blog' in the above "snow tunnel" picture. It's camouflaged nicely.

When I was teaching I got great satisfaction out of the lessons I taught leading up to MLK Day. I feel they were of great benefit to my students and also helped me build the kind of classroom atmosphere in which all students were accepted by others and could thrive.

In no way do I deify King, but I don't think people should diminish what he accomplished for others. I know many people opposed making a national holiday in his honor, but to me, MLK Day is less about him, than about the ideals for which he stood. And unlike our religious holidays, which are truly Holy days, our national holidays, such as Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Veterans Day (which was once Armistice Day) call us to be true to the ideals of our nation. Ideas and ideals are much bigger than any one man, but to be a part of furthering noble dreams is a worthy ambition.

My last year of teaching I made a donation in honor of my class toward the MLK National Memorial Project which will create a memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. I recently received a calendar from the sponsoring foundation and would like to share some of the inspirational quotes it contained.

• “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
  
• “At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.”
  
• “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”
  
• “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”
  
• “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
  
• “Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”
  
• “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
  
• “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
  
• “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
  
• “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but it comes through continuous struggle.”
  
• “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”
  
• “When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’”

As Amanda observed when I showed her the calendar, isn't it sad that fifty years after King's death, we are still struggling with man's inhumanity to man. No one person can end that struggle, and it's not likely any movement or philosophy can. But that is no reason each of us individually should not do everything in our power to ease the burdens and lift the spirits of our fellow man.