Martin Luther King Day

Hi. My name is Christian Yarnell. I work in the Economics Section here in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Monday, January 21 is a national holiday in America in honor of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Some Ukrainian friends of mine recently asked, a bit surprised to learn of this holiday, if Martin Luther King was really such an important figure in our history. So I'm going to try and take this time to try to answer that question.

On Martin Luther King Day, in fact what we are celebrating is not just the man himself, but the ideals and the movement that he stood for. While America succeeded in winning independence from the British Empire back in the 18th century, we emerged with plenty of problems that threatened the survival of our nation. Among these problems was the institution of slavery, which continued to exist in some states for nearly a hundred years after the War for Independence, until it was finally abolished during the Civil War.

But even the end of slavery did not end the scourge of racism in America. Especially in the South, many states moved to introduce racist legislation meant to continue the subservience of black Americans to whites. Blacks were preventing from voting, could not eat in the same restaurants as whites, and were forced to ride in the back of the bus on public transportation. Those who challenged this racist social order faced harassment and beatings, were attacked by dogs, and sometimes were brutally murdered.

Yet they continued to resist. In what came to be known as the Civil Rights Movement, people decided to stand up against the racist social system of segregation and demand change. At first the Movement focused largely on legal action, challenging the legality of racist laws in the courts. While this strategy had some limited success, by the mid-1950s people grew impatient and turned to a more aggressive approach of direct action. Using nonviolent resistance, opponents of segregation launched public protests against racist laws, demanding equal rights due to them under the Constitution.

The success of the Civil Rights Movement resulted from the actions of so many different people. Lawyers, politicians, religious leaders, schoolteachers, shopkeepers, students, really everyone played a role. Although it was a long struggle carried on by many different people, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister, is now remembered as being a leader among leaders, and as the moral voice of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King was a devout believer in the principle of nonviolent civil resistance as taught by Mahatma Gandhi in India, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end segregation. What was so special about Dr. King was that he was able to make all Americans, black and white, understand the evilness of racism, and he convinced us to work together as a nation to fight it.

He told his followers to love even their enemies, the racists who jailed them, beat them, and killed them. Hatred only breeds hatred, and violence breeds violence, Dr. King told us. He wanted not just to secure the rights of blacks, but to change the thinking of whites as well. In one of his most famous sermons, he told people all over America and the world, "I love you. I would rather die than hate you. And I'm foolish enough to believe that through the power of this love somewhere, men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed. And then we will be in God's kingdom."

Dr. King's arguments were so powerful because he demanded that America live up to its own promises, nothing more, nothing less. He was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was defending the rights of black workers. But in the end Dr. King won America over, and made us all realize that our nation was failing to live up to our own founding principles, put simply in the words of our Declaration of Independence, that "All men are created equal."

For reminding us of what we stand for as a country, and for helping us return to those principles, America is forever grateful to the Civil Rights Movement and to the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.