Guest Opinion: Why remember Martin Luther King? Guest Opinion: Why remember Martin Luther King? (January 19, 2005)

by Mary F. Flamer

Each year, as we approach Jan. 15, the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I find myself asking, "Why do we need to remember Dr. King's birthday?"

Is it because his life was ended at 39 years of age? Do we remember Dr. King because of the many times he went to jail, or do we remember his non-violent doctrine of passive resistance?

As an African American, I believe there is not just one reason to remember both him and for what he stood. Yes, he died young, he went to jail many times and he believed in passive resistance. But he taught young people and old people alike that no matter the hue of the skin we are somebody and deserve to be treated with dignity.

I grew up in the South under the Jim Crow segregation laws. There was a public library in my hometown, Luverne, Alabama -- with books and librarian, paid for with taxpayers' dollars.

But black boys and black girls were not allowed to enter this establishment.

There was a public swimming pool where white children were given swimming lessons, but I could never hope to wet my hot, weary feet in that cool blue water.

Separate water fountains and restroom facilities were the order of the day, and if there was only one water fountain or restroom it was clear who could not use them.

Last fall I visited part of my family in Dothan, Alabama, and we ate in some of the finest restaurants. We met other family members in Montgomery, where we stayed at the Radisson Hotel right downtown. We drove through the streets of Montgomery, and looked at some of the historical sites that memorialize the Civil Rights struggle.

Dexter Street Baptist Church, where Dr. King was pastor when he was thrust into the Rosa Parks situation/Bus Boycott, still stands. The Civil Rights Museum is just a few blocks from the Capitol Building where the late Governor George Wallace reigned as Alabama's number-one segregationist.

The 1965 Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights March, led by Dr. King, ended on the steps of this massive State Capitol Building. It seems that everything I looked at connected me with Dr. King.

Yet my spirit is troubled when I see our future, young Black men selling drugs on the streets or East Palo Alto. My heart breaks for the young women who deny themselves the privilege of an education in order to be with someone who is incapable of providing for them.

I wonder: Do they know the price that was paid by so many for them to have the opportunities that are now available to them? I wonder: Would it make a difference if they knew that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had "A Dream" that included them?

The answer to my question, "Why do we need to remember Dr. King?" is found in everything that is written above. Dr. King had a relationship with God that motivated him to strive for changes in laws that had continued to hold people of color in bondage more than 100 years after the end of slavery.

It would be an equal or greater injustice if we dare to fail to remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and allow our young people of all ethnic backgrounds to drift and fall away from his dream of equality, dignity and well-being for all.

Mary F. Flamer is the mother of four children. She was born in Alabama to sharecropper parents and attended segregated schools. She and her husband, a Vietnam veteran and airport police officer who died in 1984, moved to East Palo Alto in 1971, and she worked for years in the Ravenswood City School District. In 2003, she graduated from the Notre Dame de Namura University in Belmont as an English major with a double minor in religion and psychology. She writes for the community Web site, www.epa.net, where a version of this column originally appeared. She can be e-mailed at flamerm_1999@yahoo.com.

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