#512

I was a child of NYC public school in the 1980s. I entered kindergarten right around the time Martin Luther King, Jr. day became a national holiday. Funny to think how new the holiday was. It seemed like it had always existed in my 5 year-old mine, like Christmas and Memorial Day because, why not? To a child of public school, this was the man to whom you pledged allegiance. He was your spiritual and secular leader all in one. So, today, I offer some words of wisdom from an awe-inspiring man:

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"

"The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."

And, of course:

"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."