Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day Today, Take A Moment To Remember And Honor His Legacy - "Life's Most Persistent And Urgent Question is: What Are You Doing For Others"

In 1957, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech in Montgomery, Alabama, in which he declared, "Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'"

Here are some ways to celebrate and honor MLK's legacy: https://t.co/wqGJXrnesO #MLKDay

— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) January 15, 2018

The third Monday in January has been designated as a Federal holiday in honor of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was born January 15, 1929 and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

Dr. King is remembered and honored for many things including his 1963 "Letter from a Birmingham Jail".

An excerpt:

... A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in it's application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest....

The full text of Letter From A Birmingham Jail is here and a short excerpt of audio below.



Here's an excerpt of Dr. King's last speech - I've Been To The Mountain Top.



Politcio has an excellent article on the last years of Dr. King's life.

... Almost 50 years after his death, we remember MLK as the transcendent figure who helped lift the South out of Jim Crow. We also remember him as almost preternaturally calm in the face of great pressure and danger. He was indeed all of these things. But the passage of time has obscured his dimensionality. In the last years of his life, King expanded his vision beyond the former Confederacy and took on a broader struggle to dismantle America’s jigsaw edifice of racial and economic discrimination—a struggle that took him deep into northern states and cities, where onetime allies became bitter enemies. He did so even as he strained to keep a fractious civil rights movement unified, and in the face of unremitting sabotage from federal authorities.

He was a young man, still in his 30s—foisted onto the national stage with actors many years or decades his senior, suspect in the eyes of both younger and older civil rights leaders—and the burdens of leadership took their toll on him....

Take a moment today to remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Great picture of Dr. King playing some backyard ball w/ his daughter.

Remember the man, celebrate his legacy. #MLKDay2018

📸: @nlbmprez pic.twitter.com/tcrrpAXhId

— Bronx Pinstripes (@BronxPinstripes) January 15, 2018

and the good work he accomplished to make our country a better place:

"Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'"

More on Dr. King from History.com