King's Legacy Lives On

Seventy-nine years and eight days ago a baby who would grow up to be the second most admired person of the 20th century, according to a Gallup Poll, was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Apr. 4, 2008 will be the 40th anniversary of his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee at the hands of an escaped convict.

Between Jan. 15, 1929 and Apr. 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. did much to transform the social fabric of the United States. More remarkably, he effected this transformation without raising a hand in anger. He met violence with dignity and graciousness that helped him achieve goals of astonishing significance by means of a force that proved thousands of times more powerful than whips, chains, fire hoses and police dogs. Eventually a bullet ended his life on the balcony of a Memphis, Tennessee hotel room, but while the physical Martin Luther King was dead, his legacy lived on. It lived on after Apr. 4, 1968, and it is living still.

What many opponents of King's actions and philosophy failed to grasp was that King's actions did not benefit America's black population alone. At the time of his death in 1968, King's greatest days seemed behind him. From the pedestal he had occupied as the hero of the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and '60s, King had come to be reviled by many of his one-time supporters- not for abandoning the fight for racial equality, but for expanding it to include a quest for social and economic opportunity for all Americans.

King, a true visionary, realized that all Americans, whatever their ethnicity, deserved an equal chance to make a decent living for themselves and their families. Everyone deserved a chance to learn new skills that led to better paying jobs, King maintained. Everyone who did the same work deserved the same pay. It was this quest for economic equality that brought him to Memphis, where the city's black sanitation workers had gone on strike seeking the same pay and conditions as their white colleagues.

King also took an unpopular stand against the then escalating conflict in Vietnam, again because he believed those on the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder bore a unfair share of that burden. Again those who had once supported him now turned their backs on him. King was undeterred.

Whatever the opinion one may hold on King's expanding his quest for racial justice, the fact remains that his vision for socioeconomic equality benefits all Americans. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for truly embodying the spirit of peace and his quest for justice for all. His "I have a dream" speech spoke to more than racial equality. His vision of an America where every person can attain the highest position his or her qualifications merit is with us still.