"With all their scintillating beauty..."

Well, I don't have to go to work today. Thank God. Instead of two days of work this week, I've only got the one. I mean, after that month-long Christmas holiday, too, I'm just really in need of some time off.

(Except I'm not. At all. I should be at work. I need something to keep me honest. I need a job! Oh--I know! I'll blog.)

So, the reason for my time off: Martin Luther King, Jr.

When I was in high school, I was obsessed with the Civil Rights Movement. I wrote several essays about school desegregation and Brown v. Board of Education. I watched grainy footage of the protests outside of southern schools, and I cried. I dreamed of naming a child of mine Thurgood, after the first black Supreme Court Justice. In 1999, I interviewed a really smart, honest Professor of Black Studies about race and segregation in Portland, Oregon. It went like this:

KS (excitable, nervous, smiley): Professor M, how has Portland changed since school desegregation?
PM (dashing, professional, less-smiley): Actually, I think Portland is as segregated a city as it was in the 1950s.
KS (fidgets. Significance dawns slowly): ......................
PM (waits. watches) : ......................
KS: Okay. I'll just need to change some of my questions around.

See? A learning experience.

So, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., and dear Thurgood Marshall, and the gutsy students in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education, and to the men and women in the US who, in 2010, do not feel full and direct access to the civil rights owed to them by their states, I am reproducing two pieces from King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Like me, King had a lot of time on his hands when he wrote this letter in 1963--he was stuck in jail for "parading without a permit" during his march in Birmingham. Unlike me, King used his time to pen a beautiful open letter in favor of "peace and brotherhood," while I am choosing to blog, and to watch Young Frankenstein.

He's really, a really good writer.

"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial, "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds..."

"...Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood [and sisterhood] will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of
Peace and Brotherhood,

Martin Luther King Jr."
(and Kendall)