Words! Words! Words! I love words, to sing them in that catchy song, to hear them evoked in moving dialogue on screen, to be swept away in a time endearing novel. Why do I love words? Because words have power!
Words can lift you up! Words can tie you down! Words can start a movement! Words can create a nation!
Take these words for instance: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” Beautiful, powerful words this nation was founded on. The founders wrote those words in the Declaration of Independence and created a constitution to honor them. They believed those words! But when it came to upholding those words… well let’s say they dropped the ball, fumbled big time when they allowed slavery to continue, and women, not even in the discussion.
A hundred years later another man believed in those words, a tall lawyer from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln would pick up the ball and start a war to end slavery stating, “That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free… ”
But sadly before he could complete the task an assassin’s bullet would take him and new words would come to power, “Jim Crow”, “Segregation”, in the south and northern cities divided among ethnic lines and immigrants saw the formation of China Towns, Little Italy, Germantown, Little Havana and Puerto Rico, Irish Town and the likes of Harlem and Southside. So at this point, “All men are not created equal”, and women well the Suffragettes were starting to make our case.
Another hundred years and another man believed those words and picked up the ball, an eloquent preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. He would start a movement and add his own words, “… I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal…’ I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character…” An assassin’s bullet would take him too, but he passed the ball to another, a tall Texan named Lyndon Baines Johnson who believed in those words when he stated, “We have talked long enough about equal rights…it’s time now to write the next chapter, and to write it into the books of law”, then he would sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968!
It took a war, a movement, three men and two hundred years but America was finally free to honor those words to all Americans!
These bills ended by law discrimination of all kinds, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability in employment, voting and housing. New words entered our psyche, “Integration”, “Gender Equality”, “Diversity”. Now everyone could spread their wings and women no longer hindered by gender entered the work force in droves.
America is a great nation made of many nations, (LBJ said that), we are as diverse as mom’s apple pie, tacos, pizza, hamburgers, french fries, cornbread and collard greens! We are one nation! We are America!
So MLK Day should not be looked at as, “An African American thing”, but as an “American thing”, all Americans benefited from his and others sacrifice, it is a day all Americans should be proud of and honored to celebrate!
This day should be looked at as an American celebration of these words, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that All men are created equal…”.