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Martin Luther King Day
Before you complain that the post office, banks, and schools are closed while
you have to go to work, or alternatively before you enjoy the shopping on
this three day weekend in the dead of winter, or if you are not in the United
States and wonder what the fuss is about, I'd like you all to remember. If you
are my age, it happened in your life time and in the adult life time and memory
of your parents and teachers. America was a different country
in my lifetime, and it took courage to change it for the better. It took many
people's courage, but one man, Martin Luther King Jr. symbolizes the
struggle for civil rights. Below are his words written from the Birmingham
Jail April 16, 1963. I think these words sum up
why we need to pause, remember, and reflect....
...Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say,
"Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers
at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen
hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters;
when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering
in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly
find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain
to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park
that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when
she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of
inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort
her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people;
when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking:
"Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you
take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in
the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will
accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading &qot;white"
and "colored"; when your first name becomes &quuot;nigger," your
middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John,"
and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you
are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living
constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are
plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting
a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why
we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance
runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope,
sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
Martin Luther King Jr.
4/16/1963
Please if you have time, read
the letter in its entirety even though
it is quite long. We all need
to remember.
Eileen H. Kramer
Ladies Advance
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