Remembering The Power Of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Words

August 28, 2013 Subscribe · Forward Remembering The Power Of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Words When I participated in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, I was fortunate to witness an exquisite example of Dr. King's oratory, but I did not then understand the full meaning of King's concluding "I Have a Dream" speech. Only after his widow, Coretta Scott King, chose me to edit her late husband's papers did I begin to appreciate Dr. King's most famous speech in the broader context of his life and times. In cogent, metaphorically rich passages, his speech expressed the universal longing for freedom and justice. Dr. King used his remarkable oratorical skills to inspire listeners to believe that their struggles to free themselves from oppression were historically, globally, and morally significant. When he spoke on New Year's Day in 1957 at an Emancipation Day rally in Atlanta, he announced, "Those of us who live in the twentieth century are privileged to live in one of the most momentous periods of human history." The Montgomery boycott, he suggested, was linked both to nineteenth-century struggles against the "old order" of slavery and to twentieth-century struggles against the "old order of colonialism." Using a passage that he would later adapt for his "Dream" oration, Dr. King insisted, "Freedom must ring from every mountainside," even in the heart of Dixie: "Let freedom ring from every mountainside--from every molehill in Mississippi, from Stone Mountain of Georgia." Continue reading... 100 Year Old Nun Is Still Fighting For Women To Be Priests Black Church's Civil Rights Movement Legacy Is Both A Blessing And A Curse A Slave's Skeleton Will Rest In Peace, At Last No Sharia In North Carolina God Didn't Really Tell Ex-Pope Benedict To Resign Vandals Give 'Try God' Billboard A Very Different Spin Emergent Church Is Latest Target of "Values Voter" Movement, Along With Satan And Islam Remembering The Power Of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Words Vandals Give 'Try God' Billboard A Very Different Spin Popular Youth Pastor Jumps Off Cliff While Fleeing From Police REV. GABRIEL SALGUERO El Sueño; Hispanic Evangelicals and Dr. King's Dream The close to 8 million Latino evangelicals owe a deep debt of gratitude to leaders like King, Rosa Parks, César Chavez, Joanne Robinson, and Fannie Lou Hamer. Our debt to them and to the Gospel is to be sure we are part of the on-going movement for civil and human rights in the U.S. and all over the world. Continue reading... JOHN MCCULLOUGH March on Washington: The Fierce Urgency of Now for Immigration Reform This is not the America that Dr. King dreamed of 50 years ago. We in the faith community will not stand to have compassion criminalized. Continue reading... JON M. SWEENEY 'God Told Me to Resign' Apparently, Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI recently told this to a friend, according to the unnamed source, and as reported by the Catholic news agency, Zenit. Benedict says that a mystical experience of hearing God's "voice" is the primary reason he stepped down this past winter. Continue reading... REV. MALCOLM BOYD Getting to Know You (Thoughts About Death and Dying) Death is the great universal in all our lives. We are all going to die. How will we do it? A deep search for ultimate meaning will touch a large number. Continue reading... PASTOR MICHAEL MCBRIDE The Next Great Revolution and It Must Be Televised If we are going to move past dreams and visions to reality and experience, the next great revolution must be both internal and televised. It must be one committed to the hard work of humanizing the poor and marginalized. Continue reading... Received this from a friend? Sign up for alerts from The Huffington Post here. Unsubscribe here. Huffington Post, 770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003