(from The Morning Call)
Every year, some people commemorate the birthday of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Many forget that 45 years after his assassination the struggle to make this day an official holiday took a "movement" in itself.
While the campaign for a holiday in King's honor began soon after his assassination in 1968, it wasn't until 1983 that President Reagan signed the law creating the federal holiday; even then it wasn't observed until 1986. At first, some states resisted observing the holiday, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. The holiday wasn't officially observed in all states until 2000.
In Allentown, the heated 1998 debate to close municipal facilities and corporate headquarters on the official holiday hit its crescendo when Richard Burton, then-eastern sectional director of the Pennsylvania branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, pushed publicly for the King holiday while engaging in — and threatening to heighten — "tactical, nonviolent resistance activities" if city officials did not respond. Burton, the Allentown branch NAACP president from 1980-1996, was the driving force in the holiday initiative during that time. "We protested and marched for 20 years," Burton later said.
Lehigh County Court was the first to close its offices in the late 1990s. Then-County Executive Jane Baker eventually closed all county offices. Allentown, however, refused to close City Hall until January 2002, under the leadership of Mayor Roy C. Afflerbach.
Over the last 13 years a new phenomenon — connecting the King holiday with the honorable deed of a day of service — has become the norm. The holiday has morphed into a National Day of Service synonymous with picking up trash, painting homeless shelters and donating blood. While community service is not a bad thing, some argue that identifying Dr. King's legacy with charitable acts has negated his connection to the civil rights, anti-war and poor people's movements. To reduce the courage, hard work, deaths and sacrifice associated with striving to attain equal rights under the law for all — a goal still not realized — to one day of community service is like encapsulating more than 400 years of history, with its blood, sweat and tears, into a commemorative coin.
English novelist George Orwell observed that political language serves to distort and obfuscate reality. In "1984," he wrote how people changed the words and then they changed the meaning.
In a post 9/11 world, where certain words don't have a clear meaning or where Hollywood movies filled with historical revisionism serve as modern-day history classes for the masses, it's even more important that we raise the bar to the true historical understanding of what the King holiday represents. But it won't be easy.
"Teaching the Movement," a 2011 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, examined the state of civil rights education in the United States. It tells a dismal story about teaching civil rights in our schools: Only 2 percent of high school seniors in 2010 could answer a simple question about the Supreme Court's landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education decision. And it's no surprise. Across the country, state educational standards virtually ignore civil rights history. And the farther away from the South, the less attention is paid to civil rights teaching. (Pennsylvania received an F grade in the report.)
On Jan. 17, 2011, our organization, along with the public, Allentown, county and state officials, unveiled what has become known as the only statue in the world depicting both Dr. King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, in a memorial — located on the Harry A. Roberts Plaza at Union Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
One of our goals is to help foster the importance of teaching the civil rights movement. Along the way I've increased my knowledge and appreciation for Dr. King and those who sacrificed so much — and still do. People like Bruce Hartford and the Civil Rights Movement Veterans, which has a website http://www.crmvet.org/ created by and dedicated to the Veterans of the Southern Freedom Movement (1951-1968). The website serves to "tell it like it was, the way we lived it, the way we saw it, the way we still see it." The insight into the annals of the movement is unlike any other civil rights website I've visited.
I'd encourage everyone to take a break from community service projects today and learn more about what Dr. King stood for. That would be one of the best birthday presents you could ever give him.
Kevin Easterling is executive director of the Martin Luther & Coretta Scott King Memorial Project of the Lehigh Valley Inc.
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