New York Times
Today marks only the 17th time that America has celebrated an official holiday in remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr. Perhaps in a hundred years, this will be just another holiday, a day commemorating a man who changed the world in ways that will be taken for granted. But there is no taking those changes for granted yet, for civil rights are still a patchwork. If many black Americans are living a version of King's dream, they live it with the perpetual consciousness that that dream still has sharp boundaries, places and situations where it does not yet apply. And, as Trent Lott has notably demonstrated, some white Americans still cling to a version of history that denies even the fundamental premise of King's greatest hopes for his people.
The very newness of this holiday should not obscure how old the cause it commemorates really is. Today honors the life of a man who was murdered, still young, in 1968, but it also honors a quest for civil equality, embodied in his life, that began the moment the first black slave landed in the new world. The revolution that we call the Civil War -- a revolution against the past -- was really a chance to see whether a nation could rebel against its own history, against the pervasively racist assumptions that helped shape that history. ...
Perhaps someday it will seem astonishing that one set of humans suppressed another set of humans because of skin color. Perhaps it will also seem astonishing someday that African-Americans continue to suffer discrimination because of the historic consequences of their skin color, all the systemic effects that arise from having been enslaved and then only partially freed. Of all the holidays in the calendar, perhaps only this one still rings with the activism its namesake embodied in his own life. It's an activism that every American can take to heart, for the simple reason that the progress of American freedom will not be complete until every American is equally free.
Boston Globe
Had he lived, Martin Luther King Jr. would have turned 74 years old last Wednesday, Jan. 15.
Had he lived, the country might have clamored to ask him about everything: Ronald Reagan, the Gulf War, rap music, affirmative action, Bill Clinton, privatizing Social Security, Enron, Al Sharpton, the looming threat of war with Iraq.
In his absence, people have been busily making assumptions. King would condemn war. He would champion the homeless. He would speak for the hungry. Some claim King would oppose affirmative action -- but then, people like William Gray, president of the United Negro College Fund, pointed to the page in King's book, ''Why We Can't Wait,'' where he writes of the need to offer ''compensatory consideration'' for past injustices and establish real equal opportunity for ''the Negro'' as well as for poor white people.
The lesson is simple if stern. Don't worry about acting in King's name; just act. He laid out a blueprint that changed the core of the country. His words echo in many ears. His ideas fuel many actions. But now that he's gone, current generations must continue building the house. ...
In some ways, this work has become harder. People are caught up in television shows, video games, CDs, malls, movies, and Web sites. It can be tougher to notice what events stab the conscience and then tend to such moral wounds by taking action.
But there is a payoff. It may not be immediate, but, as King suggested, it can be seismic. In ''Why We Can't Wait,'' he wrote:
''One aspect of the civil rights struggle that receives little attention is the contribution it makes to the whole society. The Negro in winning rights for himself produces substantial benefits for the nation.... Eventually the civil rights movement will have contributed infinitely more to the nation than the eradication of racial injustice. It will have enlarged the concept of brotherhood to a vision of total interrelatedness.''
It's a worthy principle to live by, and it's honor enough to King: Fighting injustice anywhere can help improve things everywhere.
Washington Times
Martin Luther King Jr.'s ideas are as alive -- and controversial -- today as they were four decades ago, when he expressed them. Those ideas are alive because they are universal. They were not for one people, at one time, in one place; but for all people, anytime, anywhere. ...
We often marvel at the wisdom of our Founding Fathers. It is appropriate to pause and marvel at the wisdom of Dr. King. After all, the last 40 years of race relations in America could have turned out very differently -- and very much worse -- than it has. There were other voices aspiring to leadership of the civil rights movement. There were calls to general violence. There were cries for freedom tied to hatred of white people. ...
It wasn't enough that he preached nonviolence. He had to convince that nonviolence would succeed. He did convince. And he did succeed -- in ending legal segregation. The fuller blessings of justice, of course, remain a goal not yet fully gained.
It is in seeking the attainment of that goal that we see the continuing importance of Dr. King's teachings. Only last week in the affirmative action debate regarding litigation before the Supreme Court, we read and heard invoked Dr. King's famous goal to be judged on the content of our character, not the color of our skin. In that context, it is worth remembering one of Dr. King's other powerful messages: that we should all feel a sense of urgency in gaining -- for all Americans -- the fuller blessings of liberty.
Dallas Morning News
Thesis: The national holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. concerns blacks only.
Antithesis: No, it doesn't concern blacks only. It concerns everybody.
Whether you're white, black or other, dare to ask yourself on which side of the argument you stand. Dare to ask yourself whether you believe that nonblacks also had a stake in the civil rights leader's nonviolent crusade against racial segregation and discrimination.
We know where we stand. Dr. King (and his followers) didn't just save black America. He saved the entire country, which had strayed far from its ideals.
The holiday is for everybody, but you wouldn't have known it from last year's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in South Dallas. There were no nonblacks along the section of the parade route where a Dallas Morning News editorial writer and his two young daughters positioned themselves. Indeed, the only nonblacks that they observed were the smattering that participated in the parade itself, including former mayoral candidate Tom Dunning and former county judge candidate Harryette Ehrhardt. Beyond that, it was an all-black affair.
What does that say about how nonblacks regard Dr. King? One possible answer is that many don't think that he matters to them, that he didn't speak, march and die for them.
Nothing could be less true. ...
People need to understand one important thing: Dr. King saved all Americans. He saved them from themselves.
Whatever the color of your skin, be grateful.
Be very grateful.
Los Angeles Times
Forty years after Martin Luther King Jr. penned his defense of nonviolence from a Birmingham jail cell, Americans easily might forget the steep political and personal price he and others paid for registering their quiet opposition to legal segregation. Today, on the official anniversary of King's birth, Americans in dozens of cities assume their right to protest a likely U.S. war in Iraq without facing fire hoses or police dogs.
In the decades since black Americans first marched in Montgomery, Birmingham and Selma, Ala., nonviolent demonstrations have become a fixture of American political culture. ...
Nonviolent protest has become part political theater, part publicity stunt, part serious demonstration of public opinion. City officials routinely grant rally organizers permits and cops reroute traffic.
It wasn't always like this. King traveled to Birmingham in 1963 to lead a campaign to end segregation at stores, schools and restaurants. ... Not bound to King's philosophy of nonviolence, Birmingham police in 1963 beat protesters, loosed their German shepherds and turned high-pressure water hoses on crowds before arresting and jailing King. ...
Today thousands of Americans are taking to the streets again -- in Washington and San Francisco last Saturday and a week ago in downtown Los Angeles -- hoping to derail President Bush's military showdown with Saddam Hussein. Those marchers most often meet with official silence or veiled attacks on their patriotism instead of nightsticks and tear gas.
King did the hard, dangerous work of making citizen protest an accepted and essential test of a democratic government's decisions.
Detroit Free Press
It's easy to get discouraged about the state of race relations in America today. Attacks on affirmative action, patterns of racial profiling that spread after 9/11, and growing economic and social disparities between the haves and have-nots contribute to a society that in no way resembles the dream of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
As King told the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967, those who are committed to social and racial justice should be "dissatisfied."
King, though, never lost hope for a better America, even in the midst of the maddening and often violent battles of the civil rights era. While America continues to struggle with many of the same issues that generation had hoped to resolve, black America is much better educated, financially secure, socially and culturally integrated, and politically empowered than it was at the time of King's assassination in 1968. ...
Those who believe as King did cannot be discouraged by setbacks, though they most always fight to avert them. They must keep their eyes on the long-term prize: an integrated, equitable society that treats each of its members with respect and dignity.
(Compiled by United Press International.)
