Today, January 20, 2014, is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, an American federal holiday marking the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around the time of King’s birthday, January 15. The floating holiday is similar to holidays set under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.
By any definition, Dr. King was the chief spokesman for nonviolent activism in the civil rights movement of the 1950s-1960s in America which successfully protested racial discrimination in federal and state law. The campaign for a federal holiday in King’s honor began soon after his assassination in April 1968. President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later. At first, some states resisted observing the holiday as such, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. It was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000.
King’s assassination in April 1968 was the second of three gut-wrenching events of the 1960s in America. It was bracketed by the assassination of Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy in June 1968 in California, and, of course, the assassination of his older brother John F. Kennedy in November 1963. In effect, in a span of five years, the pain of the Vietnam War, notwithstanding, the United States lost three major leaders, two within months of each other.
America’s pain—including the country’s involvement in Vietnam—did not begin to come to closure until President Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Nixon’s pardon by then President Ford may or might not have been the beginning of “healing,” but this action did indeed start a kind of process from 11 years of assassinations, military defeat, and egregious presidential misconduct.
For me, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is not only a day to celebrate his stature in American history, it is also a day to recall the pain associated with his life and passing and the much larger meaning of the civil rights movement.
Dr. King’s assassination was a horrific event in a very long series of events that can be viewed in the context of thousands of years. The Ancient Egyptians had slaves. The Ancient Persians had slaves, as did the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Leaping forward to the time of the discovery of America, the so-called New World, numerous colonies, especially in the South founded their economies on the “slave” asset—a human trafficking trade exercised by several European countries, including Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Dutch. Slavery went hand-in-hand with the Colonialism mentality and the arrogance of some nations that their way of life was the better way of life.
It is perhaps somewhat ironic that Britain, following its double-defeat in America’s War of Independence and the War of 1812 outlawed slavery in the 1830s. It would take another 30 years or so for President Lincoln to free the slaves in America—the so-called Emancipation Proclamation—resulting in America’s Civil War. And even though the passing of the 13th Amendment to the country’s Constitution in 1865 made slavery a Federal offense—coinciding almost exactly with the defeat of the South in that same civil war—it resulted a short time later in Lincoln’s assassination. And the story does not end there. It would take another hundred years for federal legislation to be put in place, thanks in large part to the efforts of President Lyndon Johnson, that would put legal teeth in that same 13th Amendment. Even so, racial prejudice would still persist, and does still persist to some degree, in parts of the United States.
The truth is you cannot legislate morality, but economic and legal pressures sure do help.
Despite all the significant progress with respect to African-Americans rights and other minorities in the United States—after all, the current president of the United States is an African-American—slavery and racial prejudice are still pervasive, not only in the United States, but globally. The larger issue has become human trafficking on a global scale. CNN’s Freedom Project: Ending Modern Day Slavery is testament to this.
According to the web site of Catholic Relief Services, today:
- More than 1 million children are victims of trafficking.
- People are trafficked in 161 countries, including the United States.
- Human trafficking is a $32 billion industry worldwide.
- On average, only 1 person is convicted for every 800 trafficking cases worldwide.
As of 2013, the U.S. government estimates that at any given time, approximately 27 million men, women, and children may be victims of human trafficking and within that 27 million, 18,000 people from over 50 countries are trafficked into the United States every year and over 300,000 children are trafficked within the U.S. annually. It could also be argued that the 22 million people of the so-called “hermit kingdom” of North Korea are also slaves to the policies and whims of its young president.
Fittingly, in early 2012, President Obama declared January National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.
The establishment of a federal holiday in honor of Dr. King’s legacy is a fitting testimony to his accomplishments, leadership, and courage. He had a “dream” and in large part that dream is being realized, at least in the United States. Moreover, it is encouraging that the history of slavery and its aftermath in the United States is a story still worth telling. Just look at the some of the films of recent years focused on this subject: “Lincoln,” “The Butler,” “Django Unchained,” “The Help,” and the very recent “12 Years a Slave.” With respect to modern day human trafficking there is “Taken” and “Taken 2.”
This day dedicated to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King is not just for him. It is also about the millions globally who are still looking to be “Free at last, free at last, free at last.”
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A personal note: Some time in 1955 a friend at the time, Ivan Levinson—he was 13, I was 12—knocked on my door and told me to come with him right away to hear an important person speak at his school, the Fieldston School (a private school in Riverdale, the Bronx). It took us about 15 minutes to get there.
We sat on a lawn as this person began to speak. He was standing perhaps about eight-ten feet away from me. I had no clue what he was talking about, but everyone around me seemed in rapt attention and were listening very intently. This person spoke with passion and intensity, but I did not understand the context of what he was saying. It wasn’t until several years later that I realized who it was: It was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I wish now I would have had the understanding of his importance and had shaken his hand.
Please write to me at meiienterprises@aol.com if you have any comments on this or any other of my blogs.
Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
January 20, 2014
© Eugene Marlow 2014