Happy Birthday Dr. King!
This morning I listened to a friend's radio tribute to Dr. King and was reminded of the struggle to get recognition of his birthday as a national holiday. AZ was the last hold out state to oppose the holiday under the late "great" Senator John McCain. Ironically, it is now AZ Congresswoman sinema who is threatening our right to vote. Damn Arizona!
We were just kids. Stevie Wonder, Coretta King and others were marching in the streets and fighting for the legislation of his birthday as a holiday. My earliest memories, long before the holiday was confirmed, are that Black students did not go to school on his birthday. We didn't wait for others to acknowledge, validate or give us permission to celebrate our hero, we affirmed ourselves for ourselves. May we find that same audacity again, especially during the urgency of now...
The least political of Black parents supported the children's annual boycott of school. I would imagine many of them, those who could, took the day off from work. The Black community made our own holiday and decidedly celebrated Dr. King in our own way.
Black churches and others in the community started a "day of service" in celebration of Dr. King. It was not to be a day off but a day to be "on", to do something constructive in the community, volunteerism of some kind. I remember volunteering at many a soup line or homeless shelter. It was a very special time in the Black community that spread to the community at large once the day became a national holiday. We must now protect the day from losing any bit of its legitimacy by becoming commercialized.
Today, feeling very despondent by the current state of things, I CHOOSE to be reminded that Dr. King did not die in vain. I CHOOSE to be reminded and inspired that he was in his mere twenties when he picked up the baton and began his fight for civil rights, equality and justice for all. I will CHOOSE to be reminded and inspired that he was only in his thirties when certain others decided, as now have their offspring, that he was too great a threat to their version of "democracy" and therefore should not continue to live. They assassinated him as their descendants are currently very preoccupied with trying to assassinate Black access to the polls and our right to vote AND everyone's right to learn the truth of America's history, theirs and that of Black Americans.
I will CHOOSE today to be deliberately and positively moved by the spirit, memory, legacy, might and audacity of Dr. King.
Happy Martin Luther King Day Everyone!
(2022)
