Editorial: Remembering our nation’s King

Monday, Jan. 16, 2006 | 8:25 a.m.

We pause today to celebrate the birth of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who in his brief life of 39 years managed to help change the way in which our nation views racial equality, war and poverty.

King was born Jan. 15, 1929, in Atlanta and became an ordained minister at the age of 19. He served congregations in Atlanta and Montgomery, Ala., where he was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association -- the organization that organized the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott in the wake of Rosa Parks' arrest.

He was shot April 4, 1968, as he stood on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tenn., where he was to help lead municipal sanitation workers in their protest against low wages and poor working conditions.

In just 20 years of adulthood, King amassed a lifetime's worth of awards and accolades, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 at the age of 35. King's bravery and perseverance, matched by his passionate oratory, gave a voice to those oppressed by racism, poverty and war. His words helped lay the foundation on which the modern civil rights movement was built.

While racism still pollutes the minds and hearts of many, children today often are free of many of the outward signs and expressions of racism that their parents and grandparents experienced -- largely because of the work King started.

But King's belief in the overall good of mankind and his words describing a world free from oppression and violence haunt us in the hollow stares of American children living in abject poverty, the images of American soldiers' bodies returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and the increasingly ugly bickering over immigration laws.

King envisioned a world free from the bitter fruits of subjugation that he firmly believed would one day wither in the light of "unarmed truth and unconditional love."

Let us re-examine his words and celebrate his work by remembering that while life is better now, many of the tasks he started remain unfinished.