Each month, we pose a question to the OneLISC family, and share the responses reflecting our diverse range of voices and backgrounds. To mark Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 92nd birthday, this month’s Reflections from the Field consider his life and work and his legacy today. The reflections register anger and dismay and exhaustion, but also hope, power and a commitment to keep working, to keep exerting good, strong pressure to shape our moral universe.
What does the life, work and/or legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. mean to you in January 2021?
A note on this month's “Reflections”
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Every year, AmeriCorps members across the country honor the legacy and teachings of Dr. King, Jr. with a nationwide day of service known as “A Day On, Not A Day Off.” We encourage our LISC members from all over the nation to do something meaningful in his honor. Members would work with kids to recreate Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. They’d visit senior citizens and play games in community rooms to stem feelings of isolation, or organize to a community cleanup or build ramps for ability-impaired individuals or host a food drive at a local church or countless other projects to demonstrate their kindness and power service can bring to a community.
As the pictures from these activities would come in to LISC HQ, it was so easy to be inspired. This year will be different. For many, it may be harder to find inspiration from service – from the ongoing impact of the pandemic to the failed Capitol coup attempt by white supremacists – but, we can. How? How can a day of service make a difference? Because one day can light the way to many days. One day can be a spark to another day and yet another. If we can all find a way to serve on January 18, maybe our collective works of good will be the change we need to see one another as we truly are with talents to share and voices to not be silent as we break down the walls of racism and move toward an America where all people are valued.
Every day we can find a way to make a difference in our communities and use the power for kindness – whether a kind word to the grocery store employee or ordering take out from a local small business or becoming a virtual tutor to an kid – it will be one more day where injustices have no ability to take root and grow. Those days will become the days where we see only the best in others. And when we make service to others happen every day, every day becomes a ‘day on.’
To be inspired to serve in your own community, click here.
- Stacey Grant, Program Director, LISC AmeriCorps
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Each year Martin Luther King Jr Day breeds internal conflict. It is both a day of hope, and a prime example of how our country distorts history.
The only way the U.S. will honor a Black man, or any person of color, is if we first make them safe. So we ignore the fact that MLK was viewed unfavorably by 75% of the country when he was assassinated. We ignore the fact he had to fear white supremacists AND the FBI, a fact that is especially poignant as federal and state law enforcement watched white supremacists take over the capitol building on January 6th.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s message wasn’t a safe one. Revolutionary messages rarely are. Today I’m doing my best to remember MLK and all his co-workers in the struggle in an authentic way.
“I am convinced that...we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” - A Time to Break Silence, 1967
- Bryan Franklin, Program Officer, LISC DC
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Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy has definitely stood the test of time. We reap the benefits of the Civil Rights Act every day. We stood for our rights as people. He is an American hero.
We certainly see some existences of Dr. King’s dream come alive. Interracial relationships of all types can exist in public without a bat of an eye. Certain laws were made to criminalize certain discriminatory practices. However, discrimination never died, it is more alive than ever.
More laws were made since then to enact systemic racism. Police brutality is rooted in racist ideals. The recent attack on Capitol Hall had loudly showcased the country's political and race driven problems. Dualism is a part of human nature, it is the state of having two different or opposite parts or elements.
Dualism allows this country to be “the land of the free” and racist, sexist and classist at the same time.
Dr. King succeeded in making the world a better place. This is why we celebrate his legacy every year. If he was alive today, he would be still fighting against the racist discrimination plaguing our country.
- Aalivia Taylor, Digital Literacy Specialist, LISC AmeriCorps
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Excepts from “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered in support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, TN on April 3, 1968 — the day before he was assassinated.
King: Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same — "We want to be free."
Freedom. Freedom has been my anthem for a long time. And freedom is a cry. I cry for my siblings lost. Something is happening in our world. A song of protest. Hell You Talmbout. The people are rising. Rising with a cry for freedom.
So:
King: Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.
We have no choice. A change is gonna come. Freedom.
- Olubukola Adekoje, Grants Manager, LISC
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Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an educated, civil rights activist and leader.
He believed in justice and equality for all mankind.
“I have a dream," the famous phrase. A dream that one day he believed would
come into fruition. He made it his mission to alter racial perceptions, traditions
and conditions.
His message was clear we should be judged by our character and not by what
we look like.
A malicious collision with a bullet cut down his preparations for the prescription
to help cure this cancer called hatred that plagues the Nation.
Have we made him proud?
This man gave his life for this cause. Was it worth it?
- Melissa Diaz, Program Assistant, LISC Houston
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Dr. King was one of the pillars that made the United States as great as it is, his vision of freedom and how we can live in a world without discrimination and without racism, how we believe in the one’s life, no matter our background. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day allows us all, as individuals, to reflect on how we live out the values that our nation honors today.
Dr. King’s legacy and principles is a reminder of why we need to believe in the justice and equality of all humans, given the complex world around us and the challenges we face, it’s upon all of us to make the world around us a better and more equitable place to live. We must understand the power of difference. For me, that means respecting others and accepting the fact that each person has the right to have his own opinion which might be different than mine.
- May Khairi, Readiness Coordinator, LISC AmeriCorps
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I was working on Capitol Hill as a Congressional intern. The Democratic platform hearings were going on.
A staffer offered to introduce me to Coretta Scott King after she finished testifying. I was excited and nervous; what would I even say? As soon as we shook hands, words came to me, “Mrs. King, you were the first person to whom I wrote a condolence letter.
I was in second grade and everyone in my elementary school wrote letters to you; all of the NYC public school system did.”
Mrs. King replied, “Not only New York City. It was millions and millions of letters from public school students all across the United States. Mountains of letters…it gave me hope for America in my time of great despair.”
Mrs. King’s eyes misted at the memory. Who knew a three sentence letter from a seven year old would matter. It did.
- Helene Caloir, Director, NYS Housing, LISC
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After dealing with a year of traumatic civil unrest, a critical pandemic, dehumanization of African American people, on January 6th we expected America to be held accountable but instead America showed us the underbelly of white privilege and fragility. Now we can compare the summer of 2020 to the current events of white privilege. Now that our vision is Crystal clear we can see that there is two different Americas which one do you live in?
“In the final analysis of a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that American has failed to hear?” What America has failed to hear is there is more work that must be done, we must be intentional and purposeful in our accountability to build a new America. Until America comes together and unite as one nation under god, we will forever be a nation divided.