This week we closed our local schools for a holiday, something we do just a few other times during each school year. On Labor Day we honor America’s workers and common man. Thanksgiving and Christmas are holidays for families to gather, give thanks and share spiritual messages.
Each Memorial Day in May is set aside for U.S. citizens of all ages to pay remembrance to our fallen war veterans. President’s Day is dedicated to two of our nation’s most historically important men, our first U.S. President George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who ended slavery and kept our country together during times of civil war.
This week all government offices and schools were closed to commemorate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the leader of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. He led decades of nonviolent protests, marches and civil disobedience in the cause of racial equality, social justice and economic opportunities for all citizens. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
We celebrate the life of Dr. King and strive to keep his teachings alive because his legacy reminds us that much of our American story has been about the struggle for justice and freedom. Race, ethnicity, immigration and slavery are prime elements of our nation’s DNA.
Dr. King has been dead for 50 years but much of what he preached and struggled for is still not settled.
“We’ve learned to fly the air like birds, we’ve learned to swim the seas like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers,” Dr. King said in one his oft-quoted speeches and sermons.
When the first question asked of Mr. Trump this year at the White House ceremony proclaiming Jan. 15 as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was: “Are you a racist?” we need no other evidence that our country’s racial conflicts are not over. Never mind any answer to the shouted question, just the fact it was uttered and widely broadcasted is startling and sad enough.
Nine years ago in 2009, our nation’s first black president Barack Obama officiated at the M.L. King Day proclamation. Many claimed that Dr. King’s dream where former slaves and slave owners would sit together at the “table of brotherhood” and all children “would be judged by their character and not the color of their skin” had finally, and triumphantly, been realized.
Now we know that was not so — not when serious doubts about our current president’s racial viewpoints and judgments are making daily news.
How do we teach our young students about the life and times of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and not mention all the recent news of Trump’s racist-tinged vulgarities? What do we need to learn about last summer’s white supremacist violent marches in Berkeley and Charlottesville and whether or not “Black Lives Matter” is an anti-cop group or a true civil rights movement?
Race and equality issues in Sonoma County on this MLK Day also include brown lives, immigrant lives and the lives of our elders who have more lessons to teach us. Dr. King believed that poverty and unequal access to health care, employment and education were all social injustices equal to denying voting rights or seats on a bus.
We believe we know what Dr. King would say and do about today’s immigration problems and controversies. After all he said, “a dream delayed is a dream denied.”
Dr. King’s daughter, Rev. Bernice King this week said, “we are one people, one nation, one blood, one destiny. … Our collective voice in this hour must always be louder than the one who sometimes does not reflect the legacy of my father.”
Amen.
