In Remembrance: Martin Luther King Jr.

Today is a national holiday in the United States to commemorate the life and work of a truly great man -- one of my heroes -- Martin Luther King Jr. 

The work that Martin Luther King Jr. was doing in the last few years of his life was prophetic.  From 1961 onward he was closely observed by the FBI as his views became increasingly socialist.  He questioned the role of the US in international affairs, asking why the US was suppressing the revolutions of "the shirtless and the barefoot people of the Third World", instead supporting them.  He critized US support of the "landed gentry" of Latin America over the peasants.

On April 4, 1967 in Beyond Vietnam: A time to break silence he said, "A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.  With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries and say 'This is not just'." 

And yet, here we are 40 years later, on the birthday of Marin Luther King Jr. with the United States involved in another quagmire.   An unjust and unprovoked war that was an attempt to protect the American way of life by securing US interests in the oil-rich Middle East.   Proof that those who don't learn from their past are indeed doomed to repeat it. 

I sometimes get so depressed when I think of the many people who claim to be Christians and yet support the unjust war in Iraq.  But then I remember people like Martin Luther King Jr. who demonstrated the love of  Jesus by advocating for the voiceless - the poor and the downtrodden. 

Martin Luther King died at only 39.  Much too soon.  I would love to hear his opinions about the world of today.

Comments

[Twosret]

What a lovely man. God Bless his soul.