Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yesterday, I listened to National Public Radio (as I usually do) on the way to work, and they were talking about Martin Luther King more than usual because he had been invoked by both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

There was also an interesting segment on Dr. King's image on wall murals and talk about a statue of Dr. King which would be from China while only it's base would be from America.

And there was also talk about how Dr. King was important not only to American's but around the world. I know that's true and I feel like I am the only person aside from stonecarvers and priests who knows that Dr. King has already been added to the statuary of Westminster Abbey in London on a panel dedicated to modern martyrs.

This is the statue prior to being added to panel over the left shoulder entry doors.

That's when I had the thought that he is almost more important to other countries than he sometimes is to us.

"If physical death is the price I must pay to free my brothers and sisters from the permanent death of the spirit, then nothing could be more redemptive. "

Maybe we sometimes have too much of something to appreciate it as it should be appreciated.

And maybe sometimes we have too little.
An article I saw proclaimed that Booker T. Washington was even more important than Martin Luther King.
Well, I have to say that Mr. Washington was brilliant and very much to be honored and revered.
These days, people have forgotten or have never studied him.

Most people have never read Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery or remember that he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, later to become Tuskegee University. His book is wonderful. He was a great man. I wish that he was given more attention. I think more blacks would have aspired to education and more whites would have aspired to making it happen if he was studied sincerely, but he seems to be fading into distant memory.

(His birthplace in Virginia is a national monument and the website says thousands of schoolchildren visit there annually. I'm glad I checked. I feel better about it now.
http://www.nps.gov/bowa)

Was Carver more important that King? I am not qualified to say.

I just wish there was someone who provides as much leadership and inspiration around today.
In some ways, we are getting to that promised land King spoke of. In others ways, because we have an unfortunate natural predilection to keep to our own, true equality may never exist. But the way we see... changes more every day.