I took Monday off in part to ponder the contributions Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made over his lifetime. No matter what you feel about the integration he endorsed, one must admit to his bravery. To stand in the face of white power and demand to have your people’s humanity recognized was already tantamount to suicide. To demand that your oppressors recognize their own humanity as well, to call their primitive selfishness and brute violence out for what they were, refrain from reciprocating, and sustain the hope that whites might someday rejoin the fold of the global flock, so to speak – well, that was the sort of thing that got you called uppity in those days. One could doom his entire family, community even, to state-sponsored terrorism once he was branded as being uppity. Churches were bombed. Women were raped. Men were raped. Children were raped. People were beaten. People disappeared. I’m glad he didn’t let them scare him. And! Although I think King’s belief in the eventual civilization of whites was, as we’ve come to see in the years since his death, a bit misguided – I mean, look at the current massacre in Iraq – the thought that someone so righteous as Martin Luther King Jr. does walk the earth every now and then leaves me with the only thread of optimism I have in my otherwise completely pessimistic mind. And so, even if his dream has yet, if ever, to be realized, he was noble to dream it. I’m a result of the history he made when he followed it, and I’ll never forget him or the others who carved this road for us. I hope I’m not alone in taking a moment to remember his deeds, for if we do not remember those who have played a role in the ongoing process of our freedom, we will soon forget that we were slaves. Here’s to healing our injuries without forgetting how they were inflicted. Happy MLK Jr. Day!