Americans today officially commemo rate what would have been the 82nd birthday of the nation’s most significant civil-rights leader, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The fact that he most likely would still be alive today had he not been assassinated more than four decades ago underscores just how young he was — only 39 — when a gunman’s bullet cut him down in Memphis.
And it also magnifies how much King managed to achieve in fewer than 13 years on the national political stage, from the Montgomery bus boycott to the Poor People’s Campaign.
These days, King’s life and accomplishments are celebrated and honored by the full spectrum of American politics.
But that wasn’t true during his lifetime, when he was one of the nation’s most controversial figures.
Democrats and Republicans alike — even some of his political allies — viewed King with everything from suspicion to blunt hostility.
And how would King’s rhetoric be viewed today as recriminations about “inflammatory speech” echo in the wake of the Tucson massacre?
For even King’s most memorable speech — the “I Have a Dream” address at the March on Washington — was nothing if not a figurative call to arms in the cause of racial justice.
Nearly a half century later, it is universally acclaimed as one of the seminal speeches in US history. But would it be seen the same way when viewed through post-Tucson lenses?
Not to mention King’s call for widespread civil disobedience and defiance of unjust laws — a call for massive law-breaking on a national scale.
Let’s be clear. Absent the struggle that King led and inspired, and for which he gave his life, America today would be much the poorer.
And certainly it would not have an African-American president.
But America had to be provoked into redeeming its most fundamental principle — that all men are created equal.
Had opponents succeeded in suppressing King’s rhetoric on the grounds of its obviously inflammatory essence, the redemption likely never would occurred.
Which should be a reminder that passionate oratory and fervent, even heated, debate are the bedrock upon which vibrant democracies are built — and America will smother both at its mortal peril.
Which is something Dr. King himself clearly understood.