The MLK holiday

Somebody I used to work with commented that he was opposed to the Martin Luther King holiday, not because of Dr. King’s work or his color, but because Dr. King was a clergyperson and we already had too many religious holidays.

I did not believe it – not so much because the concern might not have been valid, but because I had heard the same person use the “n” word too many times.

But it is worth noting that Martin Luther King Day is indeed a holiday named for a clergyperson, a pastor from Atlanta.

But it is not for his pastoral work that we remember Dr. King, but instead for his prophetic work. And with all that happens since can we doubt that there was indeed a lot of truth in his message?

So many are too young to remember what the world was like sixty, fifty, or even forty years ago. And some of us who were around were too geographically removed from the worst of Jim Crow to appreciate its horror, its ongoing belittlement of so many of God’s children without acceptable reason.

But there were other injustices, ongoing belittlements, going on and Martin Luther King knew it.

Dr. King not only made certain that all America, indeed all the world, knew of America’s, indeed the world’s, injustices and linked Jim Crow to evils facing peoples of all races and ethnicities.

And we need to appreciate that.