Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and my family and I join with millions in remembering the life and legacy of Dr. King. Today the Prices plan to fill hygiene kit bags for the church community center, and listen to one of Dr. King's landmark speeches together. We all still have so much to learn from his courage and wisdom. What a star God sent to orbit our earth from 1929 to 1968.
In honor of MLK Day I want to offer ten things I think are important to know about and learn from Dr. King. This list is only a start; but it's important that a good start be had when it comes to understanding Dr. King in the totality of his philosophy and witness:
1. He was the son of the black church; and his movement found its organizing framework within that beautiful Body.
2. He was prodigious in study -- graduating from high school at 15, college at 19, and completing both an MDiv and PhD by the time he was 27.
3. From beginning to end he made his commitment to nonviolence the foundation of his message. We hear that in his first Montgomery boycott speech and we hear it in the speeches of his last year of life also.
4. Words were not Dr. King's only weapon, political organization was the other. And it was the latter that broke the back of the Montgomery power-structure. As Dr. King said, "Power without love is reckless and abusive, love without power is sentimental and anemic." Dr. King's movement combined both.
5. It wasn't just Dr. King's movement! Thousands joined his ranks, creating the political power necessary to make change. These thousands included a backbone of women organizers who were, sadly, often left unsung in their sacrifice. Chief among these was Coretta Scott King.
6. Dr. King was not a perfect human being, and the federal government attempted to exploit the foibles in his humanity in order to try to discredit his work and witness. It is an old story.
7. Dr. King's speech against the War in Vietnam was a watershed moment for the anti-war movement, but cost Dr. King a great deal of support from politicians like LBJ.
8. The movement was not only a civil rights movement, but a human rights movement. In affirming human rights throughout the world, Dr. King linked the "three evils" of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism together as three heads of the same dragon.
9. In his later years Dr. King argued for universal basic income -- not as a matter of charity, but of justice.
10. Dr. died in Memphis fighting for the rights of sanitation workers -- remember that when you see the garbagemen come down your street, and remember it when you hear somebody talk down about labor organizing.
Ryon Price is the Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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