By Edwin Cooney
Okay, so betting my sweet bippy dates me!
So does my birth certificate, my waistline and my increasingly poor memory! However, I'll bet my bippy as well as yours on any challenge to Dr. King's reputation and memory.
Although one doesn't have to be the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize to have been adequately courageous or brave, I am not personally aware of anyone I know who would volunteer to participate in a project that continuously endangered their children's lives. Of course, anyone who soldiers or polices continuously puts his or her life in danger, but even most of them are monetarily compensated.
When Martin and Coretta Scott King publicly supported the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott in December of 1955, Coretta had just given birth to the couple's first child, a girl, Yolanda Denise King, whom they nicknamed Yoki.
As for the Nobel Peace prize, I think it's always helpful to remember what peace is and what it isn't. Peace is beyond measurability since it is far more than the mere absence of war. Peace is a state of mind that requires more than mere tolerance. It requires an appreciation of others' conditions in life. Dr. King saw peace as a command from God ordering the followers of its precepts to — among other things — draw a distinction between principles and mere rules. Rules are primarily a matter of orderly conduct whereas principles are about a way of conduct during one's life.
As for Dr. King's less admirable habits, specifically his marital misconduct, author Jonathan Eig tells us in his recent huge biography of Dr. King that he always confessed his misdeeds to Coretta as a matter of conscience.
Although the grandson and son of two stern preachers who issued corporal punishment to their children, Martin (or if you prefer, Michael King III as he was originally named on Tuesday, January 15th, 1929) was gentle with his children.
We celebrate George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as much for the significance of their presidencies as we do for their personalities.
However, Martin Luther King neither founded our nation nor preserved its union. He merely proclaimed and glorified its legitimacy!
At the heart of Dr. King's very being lay his profession. On Tuesday, April 16th, 1963, he published his “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” Author Jonathan Eig in his monumental and brilliant work on the life of Martin Luther King writes that Dr. King was concerned that both citizens and his fellow clergymen were all too ready to compromise on the issue of racial accommodation. Accommodation, as he saw it, amounted to acceptance of the status quo. Thus, he reminded his fellow preachers and his and their followers that no unjust law was a legitimate law. Dr. King was neither a lawyer nor a legislator; he was a preacher doing God's work. God's work was God's will and God's will wasn't negotiable.
A people who insist that they trust God's will is a righteous people. A country that strives to be worthy of God's will is a righteous nation.
George Washington gave us our independence. Abraham Lincoln cemented our unity. Equally significant, Dr. Martin Luther King glorified America's spirit!
As our greatest spiritual leader, Dr. Martin Luther King more than deserves a national day of permanent recognition!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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