Accents
Remember! Celebrate! Act!
Bluffton, South Carolina, USA, Jan. 21—Today, third Monday of January, America celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Schools, banks, and federal offices are closed, thus Lolo and Lola have grandkid Danika to watch on TV nationwide celebrations of the birth anniversary of the king of human rights activists (as his name fittingly suggests). Actually, King's birthday was Jan. 15, but the US usually calendars holiday observance on Mondays to provide folks a longer weekend. (Nice idea, huh.)
Twice I have written about MLK (like JFK, the man's initials have become legendary) because what he stood for is something to be passionate about—ideas and ideals to remember, to celebrate, and to act upon.
Remember! Celebrate! Act! Three things asked of Americans to do—the theme of the 2008 anniversary celebrations. The networks are giving a field day to the presidential candidates—Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards—extolling the MLK legacy. Bluffton Today, a newspaper in Bluffton City, exhorts readers to "Relive the dream" and has the famous "I Have a Dream" speech printed. Excerpts:
"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 one day…the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood…
"I have a dream that my 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.
"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Delivered in 1963 to an international assembly said to be more than 200,000 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., MLK's dream for his people has come true in the respect accorded to black Americans and in the positions of authority many of them occupy. His demand for "equal justice for all citizens under the law" inspired not only his fellow black Americans but also other oppressed people in the world. Time magazine honored him as its 1963 Man of the Year. At age 35, his efforts to advance peace, brotherhood, and social justice made him the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded on Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, 1964 in Oslo, Norway. Said King: "I accept this prize on behalf of all men who love peace and brotherhood... I accept this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom...for its true owners--all those to whom beauty is truth and truth beauty--and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold."
Remembering takes me to San Francisco's Yerba Buena Gardens, the second largest memorial to MLK after the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia, which we had visited along with the Carter Center, also in Atlanta. Yerba Buena's central attraction is a man-made waterfall where the roar of the falling water echoes the strength of conviction in the MLK quotes. We took shots of the inscriptions engraved in the concrete panels that surround the waterfall.
From his San Francisco address delivered in 1956 at the height of racism: "I believe that the day will come when all God's children from bass black to treble white will be significant on the constitution's keyboard."
From a speech in Washington, D.C., in 1963: "No, no we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."
Gunned down at age 39 in 1968 in support of striking union members, his last address was prophetic of his martyrdom: "Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its fate but I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will and if it allowed me to go up the mountain and I took over and I'd seen the promised land, I cannot go there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get the promise."
Excerpts from other speeches are in the other panels as translated in different languages. One has characters that looked Chinese to us. One looking similar to it we took to be Japanese. Another with proliferation of dots we thought to be Arabic. But one panel is unmistakably ours, yes, in beautiful Filipino: "Ngayon ay panahon ng pagbabago. Sa lahat ng dako ng daigdig ang mga mamamayan ay naghihimagsik laban sa mga makalumang pamamara-an ng pagsasamantala at pang-aapi at mula sa sinapupunan ng marupok na daigdig ay isinisilang ang mga bagong pamamara-an ng katarungan at pagkapantay-pantay. Ngayon higit kailan man ang mga mamamayang dati-dati ay walang lakas at walang malay ay natutong makipaglaban." The very words that could come from our own idealistic young—Lean Alejandro, Edgar Jopson, Emmanuel Lacaba, my cousin Edmundo Rivera Legislador, and several others who, like Martin Luther King, Jr., were victims of violent death.
The best way to honor MLK is not only to remember and celebrate, but to act—that is to live by his words, thus making his dream a continuing reality.
(Comments to lagoc@hargray.com)