Editor’s note: In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill codifying into law an annual remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr. In memory of King, the Emerald is reprinting an editorial originally run Monday, Jan. 20, 1986, the first national celebration of the holiday. Much has changed since his time, and indeed, since 1986, but King’s message of tolerance, equality and human rights is timeless.
Today marks the first celebration of a national holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Newspapers have been full of recounts of King’s life, and administration officials and others have been busy praising King in speeches around the country. On campus, the Black Student union sponsored a speech by civil rights activist Vincent Harding in King’s honor.
Establishing a national holiday and organizing events to remember King are excellent ways to honor the man and his accomplishments. But remembering King is only a start. It is not enough to recognize that he was a great man. It is not enough to praise his speeches. It is not enough to honor condemnation of violence.
If anything King taught is to make a real difference, we must strive to live by the codes King preached. And we must strive to make his dream a reality. King fueled the modern fight to end black oppression in America, but the struggle is far from over.
During King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, he said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.’”
But the dream is still only a goal. The “whites only” signs are gone. Blacks can vote in every state. Blacks cannot be refused service. Blacks cannot be refused access to real estate purchase. But blacks have a long way to go before reaching economic and employment parity with white Americans. The unemployment rate for blacks, 15.5 percent, is almost twice that for whites. And 42 percent of black Americans live in poverty.
A report released June 3, 1985, revealed black children are three times as likely as white children to be poor, four times as likely not to live with either parent and five times as likely to be on welfare. The study found that the poverty rate for black single-parent families headed by women, about 70 percent, is about 30 percent higher than for white single-parent families headed by women.
Racism has not been extinguished. Black family members in a white Philadelphia neighborhood recently were terrorized out of their home. Membership in white supremacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations and the Posse Comitatus is growing. And the Ku Klux Klan will march today in Pulaski, Tenn., in protest of the holiday honoring King.
And though President Reagan has been full of kind words for King this past week, it is his administration that is dismantling affirmative action policies. It is his administration that has failed to vigorously enforce civil rights codes such as fair housing practices. And it is he who opposed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and it is he who initially opposed establishing a national holiday for King.
Take time today to remember King. And in his memory, take time to remember American blacks who struggle against racism, South African blacks who must fight for even fundamental human rights, starving Ethiopians cast out by their government and oppressed people throughout the world. And in King’s memory, make a commitment to take action against racism and oppression.