The Lincoln Log

Martin Luther King Jr. making a speech in Washington D.C.

When most students think of “Martin Luther King, Jr.” what comes to mind are perhaps the words, “I have a dream,” or the fact that we get a day off school. However, King has played an immense part in out day-to-day lives, from who gets to go to school where to how we view each other.

The public figure was born in Atlanta, Georgia, received a Bachelors degree from Morehouse College, completed his Bachelors of Divinity at Crozer Theological Seminary, and received his Ph.D. from Boston University. The son of a Baptist pastor, King was ordained and the minister to a Baptist church himself in Montgomery, Alabama. His leadership of the black boycott of segregated city bus lines gained him prestige as a civil-rights leader and he soon organized Southern Christian Leadership Conference, his basis of pursuing civil rights activities nationwide, and the rest, is history.

He is famous for his philosophies on nonviolent resistance, the practice of Civil Disobedience, or refusal to obey a law or follow a policy believed to be unjust, a practice used by Gandhi, and discussed by Thoreau. Those who believe in of civil disobedience usually base their actions on moral right and employ the nonviolent practices of passive resistance in order to bring attention to the discrimination. Risking punishment, like violent acts of retaliation or imprisonment, they try to change the law with their protests. Contemporarily, civil disobedience is used in events like street demonstrations, marches, and strikes. He was arrested numerous times for his peaceful protests, one of the most famous, in Birmingham, inspired his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” which speaks on freedom and oppression, earning worldwide attention, for himself and his cause because of the horrific violence toward the civil rights protesters there by the police. His leadership in the march on Washington, which had a 200,000-person head

count, cemented his place in history, along with winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

On April 4, 1968, he was shot and killed as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, which since 1991 has been a civil-rights museum. Is that it? We remember a handful of his more famous words, and honor him with a school free day once a year? What most do not realize is that Kings’ battle is not over. Civil rights are not a closed case—all over city, state, and country, people worldwide are still fighting for the basic rights of being treated as everyone else is.

King changed the world in a massive, almost earth-shattering way; he tried to change not only the way we lived, but also the way we thought. For once the idea that each person be viewed according to his or her individual merits became credible. He phrased it best when he said, “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Today the battle over racial equality still rages, but perhaps an even more pressing issue for us today is the fight for equal treatment, no matter your sexual orientation. Why are these basic freedoms still considered a privilege for the worlds’ minority groups? We as San Franciscans understand better than anyone the value of equality and the sting of discrimination. Hopefully, in the future, as we think Martin Luther King Jr., we will not just check it off as another one of those meaningless federal holidays. We will stop, appreciate the man who led a struggle we still continue today, and think of those who still do not have the rights of equal opportunity and treatment that you take for granted.

{{quotebox|left|civil rights

pl.n.

The rights belonging to an individual by virtue of citizenship, especially the fundamental freedoms and privileges guaranteed by the Constitution, including civil liberties, due process, equal protection of the laws, and freedom from discrimination.

adj. or civ·il-rights

Of or relating to such rights or privileges: civil rights legislation.| }}