Reverence worthy of a King

IU is getting ready to observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day on all of its campuses. On Tuesday, King would have been 79 years old. For the observance of his birthday and holiday this year, the National King Holiday Commission has provided, as a theme, the martyred civil rights leader’s concept for a “beloved community.” This is very appropriate. In today’s society of warmongering, poverty, racism and widespread hatred, the continued search for King’s notion of the “beloved community” should be at the forefront of all efforts to mark his 79th birthday.\nIt is commendable that IU King Day Essay Committee, chaired by Laura Plummer (who is also head of the IU Patten Foundation), has asked undergraduate and graduate students to enter written essays, for earmarked prizes, in the King Day 2008 Essay Competition. The topic, “Building the Community: Making the Dream a Reality,” has been drawn from King’s “beloved community” perspective.\nIt was on Nov. 2, 1983, in the White House’s Rose Garden, that President Ronald Reagan signed the bill that made King’s birth date the 10th federal holiday. \nSince then, Americans from all walks of life, as well as educational institutions, have teamed up to make the observance of the holiday and King’s birthday a reality.\nLast year’s IU King Day keynote speaker, South Africa-born Naomi Tutu, used part of her electrifying speech to urge IU students and other listeners to make a difference by using their various talents in helping to build a just and beloved society. She called these talents gifts. Therefore, in congruence with this year’s “beloved community” theme, it is very important for all to pull together their natural and human resources for the creation of what King saw as the future’s “beloved community.” In the face of ravaging civil and militaristic wars throughout the world, coupled with assassinations and wanton destruction of human lives in other ways, one might say that it is not very easy to adhere to King’s varied calls for the creation of a “beloved society.” Yet, if we re-visit some of the words of wisdom that he preached in sermons and also in his memorable public speeches, we can see that it is not impossible to reach that goal.\nIn a spirit of selflessness and prophecy, King gave his last and apocalyptic “I See the Promised Land” sermon on April 3, 1968, at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tenn. Delivered a day before his assassination, King used the sermon to tell his large, racially mixed audience that he might not get to the “beloved community” (or “the promised land”) with all Americans, adding: “But I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the promised land.”