[Coltrane]

.

 

[stewgriff]

It's always uplifting to hear this speech, and to appreciate a great leader in history.

 

[DLeeWebb]

We should all pause and reflect on Dr. King's dream and his actions to accomplish it. We enjoy these three-day weekends and all to often we don't even give a passing thought as to the reason that these days of commoration exist. The same goes for labor day, memorial day, and veteran's day. The least that we owe is to remember...

 

[vcoheda]

Most people I know don't even have off. What a shame.

 

[brandonink2001]

I thank you Coltrane and others. Its great to know civility is alive, and that there are still many who choose to recognize King and other American heroes who fought for unity. People of all races and backgrounds contributed to what we are today.

And for those who disagree, thanks for being civil and allowing opinions to flourish even when you may not agree with them.

 

[Lazarus Short]

ML King, for all his faults [we all have them], belongs to the ranks of those who spoke out against the invisible empire of money, greed, and power, and who ended up, in the words of Bertolt Brecht, "shoved under the ground in a zinc coffin." Jack Kennedy died for the same reason, as did many others.

Laz

 

[blessingx]

It's crazy a remembrance of this stature is even considered "political" (unless everything is). Still thanks for the reminder Coltrane and for the civility of those in disagreement. Like Lincoln's Second Inaugural, MLKs I Have a Dream speech is something that should be read often. I don't often feel patriotic (as most who define themselves as), but those two speeches make me proud to come from their writers country.

 

[jPoDTGN]

BU Rep'n! w00t

 

[plainsong]

Quote:

Originally Posted by blessingx /img/forum/go_quote.gif It's crazy a remembrance of this stature is even considered "political" (unless everything is). Still thanks for the reminder Coltrane and for the civility of those in disagreement. Like Lincoln's Second Inaugural, MLKs I Have a Dream speech is something that should be read often. I don't often feel patriotic (as most who define themselves as), but those two speeches make me proud to come from their writers country.

In the family I am from, it is highly political, but in the family I am in, it is not.

Well said, and I feel eggsactly the same way.

/obviously it's not a big holiday here, so thank you for the reminder.

 

[Lazarus Short]

There is a political aspect and a spiritual aspect. Two or three generations will probably go by before the proper perspective is reached. We are too close...

Laz

 

[socrates63]

Long live Dr. King's legacy and the issues he championed... I heard one of his speeches on NPR today and his speech was still relevant today which is kinda sad -- sad because the problems he talked about 40 years are still here with us.

 

[Asr]

Thanks for those quotes Coltrane, most of those I didn't remember. The man left behind a great legacy indeed, those words ring true and deep. I hope society continues to take those words to heart into the future, there's still lots of room for improvement.

 

[bahamaman]

My favorite writing of Dr. King is found in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail". In particular, it is this part I find most moving:

"Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "n*****," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."

 

[BlindTiger]

Excellent excerpt, bman.
I went to HS during the eighties and read Letters from a Birminham Jail along with reading about the Aparthied regime in South Africa.
One down many more to go.

 

[Dominat0r]

You know its funny. I hear alot of talk about this holiday with some of my friends at work. They kept going on about MLK only being a Afro-American holiday. However in my eyes, it should be a day we all pay our respects to a great man. He has shown, what we are as a people and how we can overcome our differences. Black or white, Mexican or Asian...we all should say thanks that we had a man on this earth like MLK. He changed the face of america and made it a better place for all.

RIP Mr. King, and i thank you.