The lesson from Martin Luther King’s life is that one person can change the world if they set their minds to it. Dr. King did not just come out of thin air. As he himself stated in “Stride Towards Freedom,” his personal autobiography, it took extensive reading and studying before he embarked on his mission to push for civil rights for Black Americans. While there is still much work to be done as evidenced by the numerous protests against police brutality, the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act reflected a newfound consensus about the need to protect everyone’s civil liberties in this country.
On November 2nd, 1983, President Reagan signed a bill that passed both houses of Congress by strong bipartisan majorities creating the federal holiday. Dr. King was the first Black American so honored.
Over the last 20 years, there has been a concerted push to make Martin Luther King Day into a day of national service. While that is a worthy idea, it is our view that every day should be a day of service to one’s community. It is heartening to see stories come across our desk and for us to observe students at all three of the schools we cover engage in acts of community service on an ongoing basis throughout the year. We simply never know who might become the next Dr. King and change their world for the better.
Another lesson that we can learn from Dr. King is that change comes from the bottom up, not from the top down. It is always easy to demand that our politicians clean up their act. But in many respects, our politicians are reflections of who we are as a nation. The passage of civil rights legislation did not occur in a vacuum; it occurred as a result of numerous actions by ordinary people over the years. When we entered the Spanish-American War, the New York Times reported that there were thousands of Blacks clamoring to go so they could serve their country. Thousands of Blacks served their country in World War I and II, made a lot of the music we listened to over the years, started businesses and communities, worked to put food on our tables, and gave us numerous thrills on the ball diamond even before Jackie Robinson integrated baseball in 1947.
As the years progressed, it made less and less sense to treat certain people as second-class citizens based on who they were. When people saw on TV the dignity of the civil rights protesters on one hand and the brutality of the defenders of the dying Jim Crow system on the other, it forced the Democrats in Congress at the time to do the right thing even though it would cost them the South for generations to come.
The point is that if we want change here in northwest Missouri, we don’t wait for State Rep. Allen Andrews, State Sen. Dan Hegeman, Congressman Sam Graves, our US Senators, or President Obama to act. We have to take it upon ourselves to act. The Sheridan Express is always open to people of all political persuasions to push for change for the better. The late Kevin Austin used to say that there were certain interests who thumbed their noses up at us because we are in the northwest corner of the state. It is up to each of us to change that, as Kevin did. By the time of his passing, he had earned the respect of every other commissioner in the area.
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