a candle in the wind
MLK Day, 2024
Martin Luther King, Jr., the man we honour today with a federal holiday and many parades such as the one nearby our current location, would have been 95 today. Assassinated in early April of 1968, he was in the prime of life whe he walked on to the balcony at the Lorraine Hotel.
King is best known for preaching for peace through assuring racial equality, a goal for away when he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964; one to which we are sadly no closer today. As America’s population increased over the past sixty years, so did both its diversity of racial composition and resulting tension over power shifting in society. King would sadly have recognized the conditions too well today as they are magnified by individuals to stressing differences and victimization rather than points of coincidence in the course of American lives.
King led non-violent marches, protests, and actions for a generation from Birmingham to Atlanta to the nation’s capital with countless cities in between. He corresponded with spiritual leaders around the globe about peaceful change.
He was a noted preacher, an organizer, a father to four, and a husband; balancing all of those roles allowed him at times to fall prey to his own weaknesses. None of us manages to succeed at every single thing every single day. King was human as we all are. The FBI was more than willing to investigate each and every instance to show his ‘deviance’.
King’s assassination in Memphis set off inner city rage in several urban centers, following on Los Angeles riots in 1965 and the hollowing of inner city Detroit two years later. That fury inflicted as much national trauma as did the changes resulting from his calls for equality. Both the memories of burning blocks of buildings and the racial changes still reverberate more than fifty-five years later. And there are voices calling both to reverse some of the equality he stressed and burn down institutions with which they disagree.
Many religious figures feel under siege in contemporary America, though few are likely as endangered as King. The irony is that few of the current leaders so carefully advocate for peaceful change yet King died by James Earl Ray’s violent hand.
We commemorate many things in America but how often do we think about why?
I welcome any rebuttals, thoughts, or comments. Actions create consequences aims purely to increase conversation as I am far from having all of the answers. Thank for reading today.
Be well and be safe. FIN