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January 20, 2014 will mark the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
January 20, 2014 will mark the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday. This milestone is a perfect opportunity for Americans to honor Dr. King’s legacy through service. The MLK Day of Service empowers individuals, strengthens communities, bridges barriers, creates solutions to social problems, and moves us closer to Dr. King’s vision of a beloved community.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was just 39 when he was shot and killed while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., April 4, 1968. Born in Atlanta Jan. 15, 1929, King would be celebrating his 85th birthday if he were alive today. The nation observes Martin Luther King Jr. Day Monday, Jan. 20.
King was 21 when he was first introduced to the nonviolent philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi at a lecture about Gandhi by Howard University President Mordecai Johnson in the spring of 1950. In a sermon on Gandhi given March 22, 1959, in Montgomery, Ala., King explained:
“The world doesn’t like people like Gandhi. That’s strange, isn’t it? They don’t like people like Christ; they don’t like people like Lincoln. They killed him — this man who had done all of that for India, who gave his life and who mobilized and galvanized 400 million people for independence. …
One of his own fellow Hindus felt that he was a little too favorable toward the Moslems, felt that he was giving in too much for the Moslems. … Here was the man of nonviolence, falling at the hands of a man of violence. Here was a man of love falling at the hands of a man with hate. This seems the way of history. And isn’t it significant that he died on the same day that Christ died? It was on Friday. And this is the story of history, but thank God it never stopped here. Thank God Good Friday is never the end. The man who shot Gandhi only shot him into the hearts of humanity. Just as when Abraham Lincoln was shot, mark you, for the same reason that Mahatma Gandhi was shot — that is, the attempt to heal the wounds of the divided nation — when Abraham Lincoln was shot, Secretary Stanton stood by and said, ‘Now he belongs to the ages.’ The same thing could be said of Mahatma Gandhi now: He belongs to the ages.”
Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, King addressed the influence of violence and hatred on the American society. As he wrote in a Dec. 21, 1963, column titled “What Killed JFK?” in the New York Amsterdam News, as it appeared in The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.:
It is a day to remember the slain civil rights activist and humanitarian and to celebrate the things for which he stood;a “promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
Nation observes Martin Luther King Jr. Day Jan. 20 | The Rock River Times
Serve On King Day
EDITORIAL: Martin Luther King Day offers opportunities to serve - North Penn Life - Montgomery News
