There are a lot of historically important days that I breeze by, thinking only of what I need to accomplish at the present moment, how to get to the next moment, and what is going on with me, and only me. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is one of those that could easily be pushed aside as ordinary.
It has always bothered me when I see one person treated as lesser than another, and living in politically and socially progressive cities all my life, it’s often hard to imagine that people are still being treated in such ways. It wasn’t until a sociology class in college that I realized how truly how wrong that assumption was, that not everyone thinks like me. It’s easy for us all to think we believe in true equality. We all want to think that regardless of race, religion, gender, orientation, class, and whatever else, that we don’t treat people differently. But we often judge people based off of how we personally perceive life, based off our experiences + assumptions.
After briefly hearing speakers on MLK and black history month last week, I did some reading of my own. I hadn’t known that MLK graduated high school at fifteen, or that in eleven years he spoke on equality over 2500 times. It’s easy to think that if he hadn’t made such advances, someone else would have, but it takes a remarkably brave person.
My freshman year of college I had a professor who, on the last day of class, showed us a video of a “nonviolent” protest she had been involved in (I don’t even remember what they were protesting!). It involved smashing windows and the general dirtying of streets and neighborhoods. The fact that MLK and his allies boycotts’ were actually peaceful (to my knowledge), and yet people were still arrested + abused for participating, is wrong, but shows their power + resilience, and faith that the issues they faced needed to be changed.
The funny thing about civil rights has always been to me that we base our assumptions off of laws. Women couldn’t vote because of laws, interracial couples couldn’t get married because of laws, and a plethora of unjust laws still exist. Were these actions that were wrong before suddenly acceptable because the laws were amended? Obviously not. Sometimes, we need to base our actions off of other reasoning in order to advance. Sometimes it seems like America prefers baby steps to the leaps + bounds that seem necessary.
It bothers me that there is still so much work to do—but I think today is the perfect day to put those fanciful notions we all like to live by—you can do anything, hard work pays off, just believe in yourself, live your dreams, love is all that matters—to use in the littlest of ways: resolving problems with peace, hanging in there when things seem unjust + doing what you can do turn it around.
You are so right that it’s easy to have important dates pass by without a lot of thought to how they were established, and also so very right about how honorable a man MLK Jr. was and what he accomplished in such a short time. This post was beautiful, thank you for writing it. ♥
perfect post for today. reading it as the President is making his innaugural speech.
nice post! I think it’s important to remember that civil rights isn’t just about race but about having equal rights as everyone in this country regardless of race, sexual orientation, or gender. I think sometimes Black people forget that they aren’t the only group in this country that suffers from inequality.