Thanks for a great article
 

In today's Daily Sun by Kathryn Stolarz, which made clear the positive impression that Dr. Martin Luther King made on anyone who took the time to really hear his message.

A short and worthwhile read on the front page

Thank you Rags123!

I thought there might be more discussion on here about Dr King, but alas not.

I thought the article, which is not in itself inspiring conveyed the message Dr King gave. The couple featured understood what he was saying and it appears they lived their life in that spirit.

Men cannot be judged by one action or misaction and certainly Dr King failed as a man at times, but his message was so enthralling, so all encompassing, IF YOU LISTENED TO IT. He was a peaceful man, who would not understand some of what is happening today in the name of "continuing his legacy". He would be appalled and push aside those who even used his name to try and inspire.

I salute him today.

In March 1967 Dr. King and Dr. Benjamin Spock led a peace march down State Street in Chicago. I was working part time at Bonwit Teller while going to college that day. A fellow worker and I watched and were amazed by Dr King's charisma. He wasn't a large man in stature, but all attention was on him. The two of us felt compelled to join him, but our break was over and back to work we went. Here is what he had to say that day:

"Poverty, urban problems and social progress generally are ignored when the guns of war become a national obsession. When it is not our security that is at stake, but questionable and vague commitments to reactionary regimes, values disintegrate into foolish and adolescent slogans.
America is a great nation,... [b]ut honesty impels me to admit that our power has often made us arrogant. We feel that our money can do anything. We arrogantly feel that we have some divine, messianic mission to police the whole world. We are arrogant in not allowing young nations to go through the same growing pains, turbulence and revolution that characterizes our history...
We arm Negro soldiers to kill on foreign battlefields but offer little protection for their relatives from beatings and killings in our own South....
All of this reveals that our nation has not yet used its vast resources of power to end the long night of poverty, racism and man's inhumanity to man. Enlarged power means enlarged peril if there is not concomitant growth of the soul. Genuine power is the right use of strength. If our nation's strength is not used responsibly and with restraint, it will be, following Acton's dictum, power that tends to corrupt and absolute power that corrupts absolutely.
Our arrogance can be our doom. It can bring the curtains down on our national drama. Ultimately, a great nation is a compassionate nation. We are challenged in these turbulent days to use our power to speed up the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."
Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Viet Nam because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. There can be no great disappointment where there is no great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, extreme materialism and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road which can lead to national disaster...
Those of us who love peace must organize as effectively as the war hawks. As they spread the propaganda of war, we must spread the propaganda of peace. We must combine the fervor of the civil rights movement with the peace movement. We must demonstrate, teach and preach, until the very foundations of our nation are shaken. We must work unceasingly to lift this nation that we love to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness."