What does Martin Luther King mean to you?

[Onlooker]

Martin Luther King is our own Gandhi or Mandela who through peaceful means reshaped our country. I think a lot of people don't realize what our nation was like prior to the 60s and 70s.

I grew up in the Bronx, and for a while all my friends were black. Then, when I was 10, we moved to a very white suburb where a neighbor constantly harassed us just because we had black friends. Then, around the time King died I was talking with the Republican Mayor of the town I lived in, who was telling me about the "piccaninnies" in town and where they lived. The prejudice was palpable back then.

And, during that same period, you also had students rising up to change the direction of the country and women rising up to get equal rights and not be treated like sex objects. The bullies were losing badly on all fronts, and were they angry! That type of anger exploded into shootings of students, murders of civil rights activists, and attacks (one of which I witnessed as a 10 year old) on anti-war protestors by right-wing thugs as the right-wing police stood by and did nothing!

Through all this chaos was Martin Luther King and his words of nonviolence. His words cut through all the hate and reminded people that the struggle was all about a dream. I don't think this nation has since had anyone as inspirational as him, in terms of what he achieved and what he symbolized. We desperately need someone like him now.

What does he mean to you?

[medeak]

1. I saw MLK march in Jackson Miss

it still gives me chill bumps. I was the only white girl(12 yrs old) on the street after soda jerk took my ice cream away saying "there's goin to be trouble...get outta here" Have never seen so many terrified white people in my life.

Was a yankee visiting german grandmother and nonplussed...went out the door and there he was front and center. Hundreds silently with stoic faces marching down the street of a totally vacated downtown.

makes me want to cry thinking about it.

[lvx35]

4. Wow!

that's quite a memory...amazing!

[lvx35]

2. To me, MLK is a beacon of peace.

MLK applied Gandhi's non-violent methods to make America a better place, and in so doing showed the universiality of those methods. The concept of soul-force, or the universal nature of the human soul underlies a lot of these teachings, and to me its a huge idea as far as giving hope that this world can be a different place. When we are able to look at everybody (yes, even our enemies) as human beings struggling a long with a soul trying to do the right thing, feeling scared, confused etc. Then I think we have the basis for peace. Peace has to come from a recognition that we are all equal, all have a soul, and are all worthy of love...Its the actions and ignorance that are the actual enemy. Its hard to remember and act on this with some of the people we see in the lime light today, but if we want peace, its the correct path to follow, and MLK showed that.

[CottonBear]

3. Freedom. n/t

[EC]

5. Peace...

"Don't let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America, 'You are too arrogant, and if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God. Men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and nations shall not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore.' I don't know about you, I ain't going to study war anymore." Martin Luther King