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Robert Kennedy : “The Touchstone of Value”

On this day in 1968, only two months after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, Senator Robert Kennedy, also assassinated, is laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. In fact, his body lies just 30 yards from his older brother, President John F. Kennedy, assassinated five years earlier.

Sure reward

Two years prior, Robert Kennedy delivered the Day of Affirmation Address at the University of Capetown in South Africa. He said:

“At the heart of that western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value, and all society, all groups, and states, exist for that person’s benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any western society.” (emphasis added)

He concluded by quoting his older brother:
“With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth and lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

Robert F. Kennendy RFK and MLK

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial MLK
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Martin Luther King Day with a Greater Purpose

On January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King Jr. is born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of a Baptist minister.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed the bill designating a federal holiday to recognize Dr. King. We observe it on the third Monday in January so it falls close to his birthday.

Upon signing the bill, Reagan remarked:
“[M]ost important, there was not just a change of law; there was a change of heart. The conscience of America had been touched. Across the land, people had begun to treat each other not as blacks and whites, but as fellow Americans.
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But traces of bigotry still mar America. So, each year on Martin Luther King Day, let us not only recall Dr. King, but rededicate ourselves to the Commandments he believed in and sought to live every day: Thou shall love thy God with all thy heart, and thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. And I just have to believe that all of us—if all of us, young and old, Republicans and Democrats, do all we can to live up to those Commandments, then we will see the day when Dr. King’s dream comes true, and in his words, “All of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, ‘… land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.'”

The Guide to a Greater Purpose

In 1955, Dr. King offered sound guidance to protestors then, and now:

“Let conscience be your guide” … [O]ur actions must be guided by the deepest principles of our Christian faith. Love must be our regulating ideal. Once again we must hear the words of Jesus echoing across the centuries: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.”

King’s legacy as a leader endures because of Who he followed:

“Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.”

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial MLK

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Martin Luther King Jr I Have a Dream Speech
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Martin Luther King : “I have a dream…”

On this day in 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivers  what became known as his “I Have a Dream” speech. From the Lincoln Memorial steps, he spoke to approximately 250,000 people at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Magnificent Words

Here are several excerpts from his speech:

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
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“Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”

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Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.”

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“I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.”

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“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

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This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims’ pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.”

So, let us all continue to work to make America great.

Martin Luther King Jr I Have a Dream Speech

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16th street baptist girls MLK

Bombingham, and “a beautiful, beautiful thing for all generations…”

On this day in 1963, a bomb made of fifteen sticks of dynamite is planted in the basement of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It explodes during Sunday morning services, killing four young girls.

Their names were Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins (all 14 years old), and Denise McNair (11).

16th Street Baptist Girls Bombingham
Birmingham endured three church bombings in the eleven days since a federal order to integrate Alabama’s school system. As a result, the city earned the lamentable moniker “Bombingham.”

“Beautiful, beautiful”

Then, on September 18th, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. eulogized the girls in front of more than 8,000 mourners. Here are a few portions of that powerful tribute:

“This afternoon we gather in the quiet of this sanctuary to pay our last tribute of respect to these beautiful children of God… .They are now committed back to that eternity from which they came.
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Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.
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God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. And history has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive.
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I hope you can find some consolation from Christianity’s affirmation that death is not the end. Death is not a period that ends the great sentence of life, but a comma that punctuates it to more lofty significance.
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Like the ever-changing cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of its summers and the piercing chill of its winters. And if one will hold on, he will discover that God walks with him, and that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace.
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And no greater tribute can be paid to you as parents, and no greater epitaph can come to them as children, than where they died and what they were doing when they died. …They died between the sacred walls of the church of God, and they were discussing the eternal meaning of love. This stands out as a beautiful, beautiful thing for all generations.”

Taft Born

Also on this day, in 1857, President William Howard Taft is born in Cincinnati, Ohio

Taft was president from 1909 to 1913. He closed his inaugural address by “invok[ing] the considerate sympathy and support of my fellow-citizens and the aid of the Almighty God in the discharge of my responsible duties.”

Then, in 1921 he was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Warren Harding. As such, Taft is the first and only former president to serve as chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Finally, he famously said:
“I love judges, and I love courts. They are my ideals, that typify on earth what we shall meet hereafter in heaven under a just God.”

 

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