Monday, January 17, 2005

In His Own Words - More Than a Dreamer

Alternet.org has a nice collection from Martin Luther King's speeches MLK Jr. In His Own Words.

From the article -

"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true."

From "Strength To Love," 1963.


Alternet also has a thoughtful piece by Paul Rockwell discussing the legacy of Martin Luther King More Than a Dreamer.

A quote from Mr. Rockwell's article -

"King, however, was not a dreamer – at least not the teary-eyed, mystic projected in the media. True, he was a visionary, but he specialized in applied ethics. He even called himself "a drum major for justice," and his mission, as he described it, was, "to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed." In fact, the oft-quoted "I have a dream" speech was not about far-off visions. In his speech in Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963, Dr. King confronted the poverty, injustice, and "nightmare conditions" of American cities. In its totality, the "I have a dream" speech was about the right of oppressed and poor Americans to cash their promissary note in our time. It was a call to action."