January 15, 2024
A Gazette Editorial
Today is Martin Luther King‘s Birthday. Half a century after he was murdered in Memphis, our country still struggles to reach the goal of Liberty and Justice for All. Yes, we’ve twice elected a Black man President, but his legitimacy was rejected by a disappointingly large swathe of Americans who bought into a conspiracy theory that he was ineligible and demanded he produce his Birth Certificate to prove he was an American. That movement was led by the man who succeeded him as President, the man who offhandedly admitted that it was all BS after fanning the flames of racism for years.
King was a revolutionary in the best sense of the word. Like America’s Founding Fathers, he had a vision for a better country. The men that declared our Independence from England imagined a democracy in the age of monarchies. MLK imagined a colorblind nation in the era of racial segregation. Like those earlier revolutionaries, King put his life on the line for a noble cause, and it cost him everything in the end.
It’d be great if we’d already evolved into the land of the Free and Home of the Brave, and if there was Liberty and Justice for All, but we haven’t. Not yet. We’ve still got a long way to go, and powerful forces have gathered to reverse the progress we’ve made so far. Let’s take a moment today and choose which side of History we want to be on, and keep working towards a more perfect Union.