MLK

Today is Sunday January 22,2023 and by this time last week many of us stayed up late or got a sufficient amount of sleep. If you are still unfamiliar with what I am talking about I am talking about the federal holiday of Martin Luther King Jr Day. This holiday occurs every year on the third Monday in January. It is celebrated because Martin Luther King Jr was such a prominent figure in American history, more specifically during the Civil Rights Movement.

Who is MLK?

Martin Luther King Jr, also known as MLK, was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929. He was a Baptist minister and social activist. He grew up in it as both his parents were Baptist ministers.After graduating from Morehouse College, he went to Crozer Theological Seminary. Then he went to Boston University to receive a doctorate (1955) for a dissertation titled “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.”Sadly, Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, AL. Later that year, Martin Luther King Jr. worked with a number of civil rights and religious groups to organize the March on Washingtonfor Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful political rally designed to shed light on the injustices Black Americans continued to face across the country. This march inspired the famous “I Have A Dream” speech. The speech and march cemented King’s reputation at home and abroad; later that year he was named “Man of the Year” by TIME magazine and in 1964 became, at the time, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.Five years after the speech he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. 

Quote

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to go to Washington DC and see the MLK memorial in Washington DC. Many of the quotes really spoke to me and it is hard to talk about just one. However this one may have been my favorite. 

It is pretty obvious that he is a preacher because many quotes like this one are inspired by the Bible. Some verses that I think MLK drew inspiration from were

 

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Dr. King delivered this message on Christmas of 1957. In this quote he talks about the practical side of love. If  people go around hating other people, then they're not helping the situation because they are  adding more darkness to the world.  You don’t solve violence with violence. The only way anything good has ever happened is with love. They've got to break the cycle of violence and hatred by refusing to engage in it. Hating someone is easy while loving someone is hard. 

How does it relate to my AAS class?

    I think that this quote relates well with our class because this was a concept even the slaves who sang in the spirituals understood. Many times these songs were spontaneously created by a group of people in the most immoral act of another human being owning another. Instead of being “every man for himself” Spirituals were able to unite the slaves during their hardest moments. They firmly believed in the Bible and they believed the commandments of love. 

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Luther-King-Jr

Martin Luther King Jr: Day, Death, Quotes - HISTORYhttps://www.history.com › topics

https://www.shmoop.com/quotes/darkness-cannot-drive-out-darkness.html