The Everett High School Chorus performed at Monday morning’s annual Martin Luther King Day breakfast hosted by the Zion Church Ministries. The event was well attended with great speeches being given by a host of officials including Mayor Carlo DeMaria.
Continue reading “Everett High School Chorus does a great job at MLK Day breakfast at Zion Church”The assassination by a white supremacist of the Reverend Martin Luther King when he was in the prime of his life is one of the great American tragedies of our modern era.
He was born into a nation praising itself as the greatest place on earth at a time when Black people were largely relegated to a second tier life in a racially segregated nation.
When he died, the nation was in turmoil over the Vietnam War, and race riots in nearly all the large American cities revealed a fractured society at odds with itself.
Through his words and actions, and with a pledge and promise of non-violence, King turned heads wherever he spoke.
Continue reading “The Rev. Martin Luther King”By Josh Resnek
If you have ever visited the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, then you might have noticed there is an inscription about way up the granite stairs leading to the memorial.
The inscription reads: I HAVE A DREAM MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. There is also inscribed in the marble the date of the event memorialized with an impressive inscription.
The famous inscription noting where MLK stood.
It was right there on that spot in front of Lincoln’s impressive statue in 1964 that MLK delivered his triumphant speech during the historic March on Washington when 250,000 mostly Black men, women and children travelled to Washington DC to speak out against segregation when race relations were literally on the rocks.
The speech King delivered, which many of us can remember well, is called the “I Have A Dream Speech. It is considered one of the epic, notable, brilliant and compelling speeches of the 20th Century and with good reason.
King brought 250,000 people to Washington DC to plead for their rights while at the same time to implore officials to end the segregation that was so corrosively ugly and damaging during that decade in American history.
The setting for the speech on the steps of the Lincoln memorial, within view of Congress, the reflecting pool and the White House on the National Mall in the centre of Washington D.C. made the speech an international spectacle. Dr King called it hallowed ground. It is no wonder that this speech has gone down in American history as one of the seminal moments in the life and times of our democracy.
Continue reading “Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King and his effect on race relations”
By Josh Resnek
Martin Luther King moved the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of people around the world when he was alive.
MLK has achieved a wider significance in death.
His triumphs over darkness for his people, for all people, stand as a historical monument to the violent era in which he lived and came into prominence.
His leadership of the non-violent movement to achieve racial equality and justice provided him one of the most powerful political and social platforms of the era.
He created a huge following.
Those of us old enough to recall him, when he was young, when we were young all instantly recognized his strong voice and his inflection, that of a Southern preacher singing the words that came out of him.
He was spiritual. He was hopeful. He set out on a path that brought him fame and applause as a young man.
Continue reading “The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.”American public figures due to world acclaim do not get much bigger than Martin Luther King.
MLK was our Mahatma Gandhi.
He was our profit of peace gained over madness and doom by never using violence.
MLK got it. He understood the human mind, the human predicament, the insanity that pushes white people to injustice and hate judging black people by the color of their skin.
MLK’s life was an homage to non-violence, to turning his cheek, to being beaten and arrested, set upon by dogs, and knocked to the ground by powerful streams of water at the hands of white haters.
White America didn’t come easily or willingly to grant black people their rights.
Martin Luther King was the enemy for many white Americans.
But many more white Americans approved of him and what he stood for.
The vast majority of Christian America and Jewish America stood for him and the just cause for equality he waged a life- long battle to achieve.
When he was cut down in the prime of his life in 1968, the nation was teetering somewhat like it teeters today.
Continue reading “Martin Luther King”