A thread of appreciation for MLK and all black people

[Melodybe]

As a 26 year old white liberal girl from MS, I just wanted to spend a moment to appreciate the brilliance and awesomeness of MLK.

My father at the tender age of thirteen marched with MLK. I can guareenty he was one of the only white boys participating. To this day my father says that it was a highlight of his life. MLK was a man with great power, to be able to say that someone close to me marched with him gives me power.

I am very proud to be able to say that I was born into a family very different from the typical white families in the south. MLK was a hero and an inspiration to us, he preached the beauty of peace, love, and tolerance.

I have been lucky to know black people my entire life, and in my life I have been lucky enough to engage in so many wonderful, deep, and thoughtful conversations with them. They have enriched my life in a way that I could never put into words, knowing black people, actually being friends with black people has given me so much. It is one of the few good things about living in the south.

I know I'm lucky, but I just wanted a moment to thank black people for giving the world some truely great human beings: MLK, Malcom X, Bob Marley, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Mya Angelou, the list is endless.

Your struggles included us all and through your liberation we are all moved to higher existance or as Stevie Wonder would say a higher ground.

Thanks.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. This girl over here with the big pasty white ass celebrates MLK

I don't want to live in a racist world.

[mzmolly]

2. I grew up in a home where MLK was also very appreciated.

Though I'm from midwest, I'm another white girl can relate to what your saying. :hi:

Check my avatar for another American Hero.

[Stop_the_War]

3. Thank you MLK

For fighting for equality and social justice. We celebrate you, and we hope our descendants will celebrate you for centuries to come.

[seemslikeadream]

4. Let America be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Langston Hughes

[DaveinMD]

5. one of my heroes

A truly great American. Hopefully, one day we'll live up to his dream.

[Bunny]

6. I was ten when MLK was assassinated. I had no idea who he was.

My older brother came running in the house saying: they shot Martin Luther King! I had never heard of him, but watched the news with great interest the next few days. It was sad, but I didn't have an appreciation of how sad it was until I was grown. The "I Have a Dream" speech can still move me to tears. RIP Rev. Dr. King.