On the day that we commemorate the 76th anniversary of the birth
of Martin Luther King Jr., his message remains as relevant as it
was in 1968 when he was assassinated, or 1963 when he delivered
his famous "I Have a Dream" speech or 1955 when he rose to
national prominence as the leader of the Montgomery bus boycott.
Martin Luther King Jr. has been dead for 37 years. He was only
39 years old when he was assassinated and had only been on the
national stage as an advocate for justice for 13 years. But in
that short time he articulated the frustrations of black
Americans, who still lived under Jim Crow laws in the South and
were held back by more subtle forms of racism in the North. He
called for a peaceful uprising against injustice throughout the
land. As every school child knows, the dream King articulated in
front of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, was a dream that
his children would one day live in a nation where they would be
judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of
their character