Martin Luther King, Jr., Day
- Christina Dendy
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
On November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed H.R.3706 - A bill to amend title 5, United States Code, to make the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., a legal public holiday. The act declared the third Monday of January a federal holiday to be celebrated in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday was January 15. It was the first national federal holiday to have been instituted since Memorial Day and Columbus Day had been enacted in 1968. I often wonder what King might have thought of that honor, but he gave us an answer and provided some context for understanding the importance of symbolism, especially when embodied in a person:
King is often remembered for his "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before roughly 250,000 people gathered on the National Mall during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963.
But six years earlier, Dr. King had given another speech from the same perch to a smaller crowd of 15,000 to 30,000 people. His words then ring true and timely today ...
"We come humbly to say to the men in the forefront of our government that the civil rights issue is not an ephemeral, evanescent domestic issue that can be kicked about by reactionary guardians of the status quo; it is rather an eternal moral issue ..."
"What we are witnessing today ... is a sort of quasi-liberalism which is based on the principle of looking sympathetically at all sides. It is a liberalism so bent on seeing all sides, that it fails to become committed to either side. It is a liberalism that is so objectively analytical that it is not subjectively committed. It is a liberalism which is neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm."
"It is unfortunate that at this time the leadership ... stems from the close-minded reactionaries. These persons gain prominence and power by the dissemination of false ideas and by deliberately appealing to the deepest hate responses within the human mind. It is my firm belief that this close-minded, reactionary, recalcitrant group constitutes a numerical minority."
"We must work passionately and unrelentingly for the goal of freedom, but we must be sure that our hands are clean in the struggle. We must never struggle with falsehood, hate, or malice. We must never become bitter. I know how we feel sometime. "
"Keep going today. (Yes sir) Keep moving amid every obstacle. (Yes sir) Keep moving amid every mountain of opposition. (Yes sir, Yeah) If you will do that with dignity (Say it), when the history books are written in the future, the historians will have to look back and say, 'There lived a great people. ...'"
The entire speech is worth reading in its entirety especially as it provides greater insight into the events and conditions of the time in which he made it. I omitted some words and phrases above that were specific to that context in order to convey more clearly the prescience of his ideas, then and now. I could only find a clip of the recorded speech:
Also, keep in mind that in the fourth quote, bitter is not the same as angry. The words are similar but carry different connotations. I often think of how bitter sounds like brittle, and bitterness makes you brittle, or easily broken. You might be fully justified in feeling bitter, but don't let your anger break you. Let anger, not bitterness, temper you into something stronger, with mobility and ductility, the ability to stretch and move and change under pressure, not something so rigidly stuck that your inflexibility makes you vulnerable to fracture. Bitterness hints at injustices unresolved; anger is one of many emotions that can fuel you to find and demand and push for solutions.
Finally, liberal can mean many things, and it's a much abused and often maligned term in modern discourse. Here, King refers to liberal as meaning relating to a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, and democratic governance. The word itself comes from Latin liberalis, meaning "noble, gracious, munificent, generous," literally "of freedom, pertaining to or befitting a free person," from liber "free, unrestricted, unimpeded; unbridled, unchecked, licentious." Classical liberalism, as expressed by Enlightenment thinkers centered on notions of freedom from arbitrary authority (hence the evolution of various more specific principles like natural rights, religious tolerance, religious freedom, individual liberty, limits on government power, rule of law to protect liberty, and more). Classical liberalism is an expression of negative liberalism, freedom from something, from arbitrary authority, from abuse of power, from interference and infringement. It's negative liberalism that gave birth to powerful notions of free markets and private property that came to define much of our society. However, liberalism had another side that also had classical and Enlightenment roots--positive liberalism, or positive freedom, meaning the capacity or power to act on one’s will and achieve meaningful goals.
Positive liberty, or freedom, underpins notions of equality of opportunity, and gave rise to the powerful notion of the people and the government acting for social change. Positive liberty begs us to consider the common good or the public welfare, urges us to recall that we are symbiotic, interdependent, and that our neighbors deserve the same opportunities that we do, that the well-being of our neighbors affects our own. Negative liberty and positive freedom, negative and positive liberalism, are distinctive but complementary. They can be used to fuel conflict or to promote cooperation. Confederates argued negative liberty to defend their perceived property rights; anti-slavery advocates, abolitionists, and oppressed enslaved persons argued positive freedom to control their own bodies, labor, and potential. Segregationists argued negative liberty, freedom from interference to exclude others from propertied spheres; civil rights activists argued positive freedom to vote, to have equal access to education and jobs and housing and transportation and leisure and recreation.
Our society, our democratic republican experiment, has always struggled to balance notions of negative and positive liberty and their exercise and protection; the tensions between the two underlie many of our fiercest public policy debates and conflicts. Keep the meanings of the two in mind and reread King's words. Remember them when laws are written to protect abstract "freedoms" or corporate "freedoms" while real people lack the freedom to live without fear, to vote without obstruction, to work with dignity, to access healthcare (without impoverishment), to earn enough to pay for housing and other basic needs, to read what they want, to love who they want, to learn, to move, to communicate, to belong. Remember them when the language of liberty is invoked to excuse cruelty, exclusion, or indifference to suffering. Remember that appeals to freedom from interference ring hollow when they coexist with domination, violence, or structural denial of opportunity.
King’s liberalism is not the thinner negative liberty of being left alone by power; it is the thicker positive freedom of being able to stand upright as a full human being in a shared society. King insists that liberty be made real—extended beyond the privileged few and grounded in justice, mutual responsibility, and the common good. Above all, in this full speech, King recognizes that in turning against one another, most will suffer and fail, and only in working together can citizens obtain and sustain a genuinely free and just society. In this, he speaks not to the minority extremists who are committed to domination or exclusion at any cost, but to the broad middle of the public—those who may be fearful, misled, or divided, yet still capable of moral choice and democratic action. King understands that freedom cannot be secured by any one group acting alone, nor preserved by appeals to narrow self-interest. It requires solidarity across differences, a shared commitment to human dignity, and the recognition that injustice anywhere weakens freedom everywhere. His warning is as practical as it is moral: a society fragmented by suspicion and resentment becomes easy to govern by force and fear, while a society that chooses cooperation, empathy, and collective responsibility creates the conditions in which liberty—both negative and positive—can endure.
Dr. King was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, a prize he accepted on behalf of the civil rights movement. Following is the full recording of his acceptance speech, well worth the listening. You can also read a transcript here.
"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up."
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has some wonderful resources to mark the day and to celebrate Black history, American history, throughout the year.
There are many wonderful children's books across age groups and reading levels out there. Following are links to a few good lists:
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