Had his life being spared assassination on that tragic evening of April 4th 1968 in Memphis, TN when that fatal shot rang out - last Tuesday would have been Martin  Luther King, Jr's 79th birthday.
But today (January 21st) is the official day to honor the legacy of the American leader when many businesses and schools are closed in observance of the great man.

If you click elsewhere on this Amoeba site under Amoeba Music Celebrates the Spirit of MLK you will get linked to a wonderful resource of information including events today (and this past week) in LA, SF, and the East Bay all related to MLK Jr.  plus audio stream excerpts of two of the most famous speeches by the always powerful orator -  I've Been to the Mountaintop  and  I Have  A Dream  (watch the video version of this famous speech in DC on August 28th, 1963 below - scroll all the way down).

Martin Luther King Jr  was consistently a devoted and dedicated fighter for civil rights for members of his race, and as a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading  organization of its kind in the nation, he was primed, in late 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great  Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the  United States, the bus boycott.

That boycott, which lasted  a little over a year, ended when the Supreme Court of the  United States declared unconstitutional the laws requiring  segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as  equals.  But what I find most impressive about Martin Luther King Jr. is that he so rigidly believed in what he was protesting that he personally suffered greatly from his beliefs. During the long days of the boycott not only was he arrested, but his home  was bombed and he was subjected to much personal abuse.  I can't help but ponder that kind of commitment by a political leader and wonder what American leaders today would actually stay the course as King once did?

For eleven solid years, right up to the time of his death,  King had traveled over six million miles and  spoken in public over 2,500 times, appearing, it seemed, wherever injustice prevailed. (And as we know  injustice is always somewhere to be found).  The always prolific, articulate & intelligent orator also found time to write numerous articles for various publications plus pen five books!   

And as reported on the official MLK website with his Letter from a Birmingham Jail: a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in  Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed  the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream," he conferred with  President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President  Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at  least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named  Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not  only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world  figure.

I still get goosebumps listening to King's I Have A Dream speech below and totally understand - in the decades since and right up to the present -why so many discriminated groups the world over embrace and adopt it as their own since its message is both universal and timeless. And King's dream lives on as long as discrimination and injustice prevail in the world - which, sadly, seems forever.