EDITORIAL: MLK Jr. Day means more than vacation

In January 2002, I started as the editor of the International Falls (Minn.) Daily Journal and its sister weekly newspaper The Region of Baudette, Minn. There was a staff of about eight journalists altogether, and while some days were tight, we still managed to put out a five-day-per-week paper in International Falls, and a quality weekly newspaper in Baudette. I wrote the majority of the paper's editorials, and pitched in on news, features and sports stories when necessary. It truly was a labor of love! And I greatly miss that period of my journalism career!

Jan. 21, 2002

The Montgomery, Ala., Bus Boycott in 1955. The "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963. His death in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968.

Many of the highlights of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life are familiar to even the youngest of America's schoolchildren. They can tell you that King fought for the integration of the bus system in Montgomery and that he spoke of a dream in Washington, D.C. But it seems we know little of why Martin Luther King Jr. Day, today, was signed into law as a federal holiday in 1980 by President Ronald Reagan.

It seems that for many Americans, the Martin Luther King holiday has come to symbolize little more than a three-day weekend. Our children know little of King's trials as a black leader in the South during the 1950s and 1960s, and less about the injustices that he railed against. His message in the last four decades has been reduced to the slick, television-like slogan of "I have a dream." And so, because we wonder how well you remember what that dream was, and why today's holiday is important, we feel it is necessary that we all revisit what King did and what he fought for.

Here is a primer:

King's 13-year career as a civil rights activist begins in 1955 with the Montgomery, Ala., Bus Boycott, which king helps organize after a black woman, named Rosa Parks, is arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white person. After more than a year of boycotting and legal fights, the bus system is integrated and King is thrust into the national spotlight as a black leader.

In January 1957, Southern black ministers form what will come to be known as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization that adopts King as its first president.

In 1962, King meets with President John F. Kennedy to discuss passing a civil rights act, something that won't happen until 1964 under President Lyndon Johnson's administration. in 1963, at a Birmingham, Ala., demonstration, police arrest King and other ministers and then turn fire hoses and police dogs on marchers.

Prompted by King, President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. That year, he leads 3,200 people on a five-day march to Selma, Ala. He also successfully registers to vote at a Selma hotel but is assaulted when he does. In 1968, he is murdered by James Earl Ray outside a motel room in Memphis.

Although a summarization of King's accomplishments does not do him justice; it gives you the basis to understand why today, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, is so very important.

It is easy to forget the past and the unjust conditions that were forced upon American's blacks and other minorities, and so that is why we have the King holiday: to remind us that his dream isn't complete and that it is up to each of us to continue fighting for its completion. To keep fighting until all children "live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."