Happy birthday 2013, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain in Georgia"
(excerpt from Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech)

NOTE  On this federal holiday, we are honoring the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968). Our drum major for justice galvanized us to witness America's disparity between promise and reality, and led us through this wilderness, responding with nonviolent actions to ensure basic human rights for all Americans and others. Today, we stand taller, more evolved, and increasingly more aware of and taking pride in all Americans' contributions — native born, immigrants, refugees, asylees, and guests. Since I first published this post in 2009, our national history and culture has grown even more rich, complex, and precious.

My previous post on King Week Atlanta Focus: Bishop Bevel Jones and The Ministers' Manifesto continues here.

A mere 15 miles from my home in Atlanta, Stone Mountain is the largest exposed mass of granite on planet Earth. It's also one giant Confederate memorial, and on it side, a carved monument showing Confederate general "Stonewall" Jackson, Confederacy president Jefferson Davis, and Confederate army general Robert E. Lee, all on horseback, all champion-leaders of the American Civil War-era slave owning squad.

From 1915 until recent years, Stone Mountain served as the base of operations for the KKK (Ku Klux Klan). Holding annual Labor Day meetings on the summit, where 60-foot ceremonial cross-burning ceased only a few years ago, the Klan's purpose: to advocate and restore white supremacy in the aftermath of the Civil War.

KKK (Ku Klux Klan) tidbits
Founded in 1865, in the southern USA states (eventually having national scope), the Klan — terrorists behind comical hats, masks, and white robes, are an equal opportunity terrorist organization. Their shameful record of violence and lynching designed to intimidate, murder, and oppress African Americans, Jews, and other minorities, and to intimidate and oppose Roman Catholics and labor unions evokes goals and actions of like-minded terrorist organizations today. Charming folks, all.

So, Dr. King's mostly colorblind foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, understood why he made the reference "Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain in Georgia" in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech [watch the 17-minute YouTube video here].

Astonishing accomplishments in a mere 38 years
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who called us to address the giant triplets of racism, economic injustice, and militarism, and who insisted that the nation be a beacon of light, not a bastion of might, was born into this culture 80 years ago. Thirty-eight years later, a crazed product of this same culture assassinated the Moses of my generation, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who by that tender age had already distinguished himself as the world leader of the nonviolent movement.

Today, on the day before his inauguration, President-elect Barack H. Obama, who stands on Dr. King's shoulders with the rest of this newly reinvented nation, wielded a blue-paint-dipped paint roller in a homeless shelter for runaway teens in Washington, DC — among other services he performed on this "A Day On... Not a Day Off" national holiday.

In the lobby of the Martin Luther King, Jr. International Chapel, Morehouse College (Dr. King's alma mater) marches a parade of portraits and busts of civil rights leaders and workers, humanitarians, and foot soldiers of the struggle. These representations include Dr. King's mentors, aides, and disciples, among them Mahatma ("great soul") Gandhi, from whose writings Dr. King drew in developing his own theories about nonviolence.

Mahatma Gandhi [gave us] the tactics.
— Martin Luther King, Jr. (1955)

Happy birthday, dear, dear Dr. King.

Mahatma ("great soul") Gandhi

(shown with his wife, Kasturbai Kapadia Gandhi)
pioneered resistance to evil through
active, nonviolent resistance