When Freedom Was King
January 15, 2018
When the sun broke over the frosty city of Washington this morning, light caught the stony silhouette of a man. Arms crossed, the towering likeness of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. emerges out of granite, as unflinching as the leader himself. Like a centurion, he stares straight ahead, eyes fixed on another monument of freedom: the Jefferson Memorial. Like a faint echo, the wind whips around the words etched in the rock at his back, as relevant as ever, “We shall overcome.”
Fifty years after an assassin’s bullet silenced the voice that boomed from Alabama to the Reflecting Pool, America still leans on the legacy he started. The challenges that marked Reverend King’s day have changed, but the struggle for unity continues. Fortunately for our nation, the fire for justice lit by a young and passionate pastor burns on.
Leaders on both sides still reach back into history, combing the examples of King for insight on the deep divides of our time. In him, they have a map to the “higher destiny” the young preacher so often invoked. Just last week, President Trump paid homage to the timeless civil rights leader, signing a measure to dramatically expand Reverend King’s birthplace to a National Historical Park. Surrounded by Dr. Alveda King, the late leader’s niece, and others, the president made sure Reverend King’s story is preserved for generations to come. As a companion piece to that overdue tribute, Trump also signed the African American Civil Rights Network Act of 2017, which gives more prominence to civil rights landmarks, and the 400 Years of African-American History Commission Act that marked the arrival of the first Africans to the colonies in 1619.
When he issued his Martin Luther King Jr. Day proclamation, FRC’s Ken Blackwell and Dean Nelson were on hand to commemorate the occasion.
“This year,” President Trump vowed, “we will not remember Dr. King’s slaying as the ending but as a beginning — as a moment when his truth rose stronger than hatred, and his cause larger than death; as a moment when he called to new life with his Creator, before whom all men shall one day stand in equal rank bearing with them no riches but the content of their character.”
“If we keep this conviction at the center of our every word and action, if we look upon out countrymen as brothers with a shared home and a common destination, then instead of meaningless words rolling off of our tongue, we will truly create one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
In four days, tens of thousands of Americans will spill into the streets of the National Mall that first heard Dr. King’s dream, hoping for a “more noble expression of humanness” for the unborn. They will march, as he did, for a revolution of dignity. “I really believe that if my uncle were here today,” Alveda said wistfully, “he would encourage us to find solutions to the problems, even women’s problems, and all problems, without having to do violence to babies in the womb… He said the Negro cannot win if he is willing to sacrifice the futures of his children for immediate personal comfort and safety,” she went on. “Abortion, of course, forces us to do exactly that.”
On Friday, pro-lifers will walk his same path in a peaceful protest of one of the greatest atrocities of our time. Each step will be lit by the torch of freedom King carried and powered by his belief, “that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.