Spring Break
Taking time to remember what MLK Day is all about
Life's Tidbits
Larry Burge
Issue date: 1/18/08 Section: Opinion
Well, brothers and sisters, Monday is a special day set aside by our legislative body to commemorate the gift of a special person, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Back in '63, I watched the civil rights marches on my family's black and white TV with as much attention as you younger students today watch the news about Britney Spears or the latest police chase scenes. I saw how the Alabama State Police beat protesters with sticks and shot at them with their guns, and how others who walked on behalf of all black people were abused by their fellow man.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy soon followed the racial riots and marches for freedom in 1963, then the death of his brother Bobby, and King became the last victim. Anyone who has followed the news in the last months about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan might in a small way sense what it was like during the freedom movement and what its supporters had to endure to gain their constitutional rights in 1960s America.
The Noel incident above was a sample of what was going on in many parts of the nation back then. The movement, first escalated by the 1957 Little Rock Central High School desegregation issue and white Southerners' resistance to ending school segregation, divided the American people.
The UA will close on Monday to allow students to celebrate the life of a great man, a brave soul that happened to inhabit a black man's body for a short time on this Earth. A black man with the name of Martin Luther King, Jr. The man who tried his best to teach every person - black, white or another color - to lay down their prejudices and learn the first life lesson: that we all came from the same source and, because of that, we are all brothers and sisters.
On the front page of the UA Web site, there is a green sign with the heading "Living the Dream in the 21st Century." Click on it, and you'll find no less than 14 events scheduled to commemorate the life of King.
Attend one of the events. And while you're there, spend a few minutes in thought, and celebrate that the human family, like Humpty Dumpty, can be put back together again if we come together, find the right glue and take the chance to make the needed changes and do the hard work it will take to put the Earth's people together again.
Larry Burge is a senior staff writer for The Arkansas Traveler. His column appears every other Friday.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy soon followed the racial riots and marches for freedom in 1963, then the death of his brother Bobby, and King became the last victim. Anyone who has followed the news in the last months about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan might in a small way sense what it was like during the freedom movement and what its supporters had to endure to gain their constitutional rights in 1960s America.
The Noel incident above was a sample of what was going on in many parts of the nation back then. The movement, first escalated by the 1957 Little Rock Central High School desegregation issue and white Southerners' resistance to ending school segregation, divided the American people.
The UA will close on Monday to allow students to celebrate the life of a great man, a brave soul that happened to inhabit a black man's body for a short time on this Earth. A black man with the name of Martin Luther King, Jr. The man who tried his best to teach every person - black, white or another color - to lay down their prejudices and learn the first life lesson: that we all came from the same source and, because of that, we are all brothers and sisters.
On the front page of the UA Web site, there is a green sign with the heading "Living the Dream in the 21st Century." Click on it, and you'll find no less than 14 events scheduled to commemorate the life of King.
Attend one of the events. And while you're there, spend a few minutes in thought, and celebrate that the human family, like Humpty Dumpty, can be put back together again if we come together, find the right glue and take the chance to make the needed changes and do the hard work it will take to put the Earth's people together again.
Larry Burge is a senior staff writer for The Arkansas Traveler. His column appears every other Friday.
Be the first to comment on this story