MY MLK Day

I put the gauntlet down last week by requiring my students to avoid floating through MLK day brain dead. I encouraged them to educate themselves and learn something about Dr. King's life and/or the Civil Rights Movement.

I chose to head straight to a magnificent primary source: this morning I read King's 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail." It took me about a half hour to process the essay, and I really thought about his message to various ministers in the Birmingham community. So many of them resented that he, an outsider from Atlanta, had the chutzpah to demonstrate in Birmingham.

I was most impressed with King's measured tone, punctuating his lucid arguments to resist unjust laws, quoting from the Bible, Socrates, Aquinas, St. Augustine, Jefferson, Lincoln, and a plethora of other greats. Honestly, one could design a course of intensive study to last months just based on this historic letter.

I have always cherished the quote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," but I had little idea that it was from "The Letter."

Read it for yourself, and don't wait until the next MLK day to do it!

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html