Of Bus Seats, Restaurant Counters, Restrooms and Drinking Fountains

I can just remember the black and white images on my family's old console television. The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. The marchers, the attack dogs straining at their leashes, teeth bared in vicious snarls. The water hoses knocking people to the street. The cops stomping and brutally kicking people on the ground, trying to cover their heads. The people shouting at the marchers. The look of insane fury and hatred in their faces.

The riots. Cities burning in the night. I was 10 years old when the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. It was all adult stuff, and didn't really affect my kid's world of bullies and victims (I was one of the latter). But I could hear the tension in my parents' voices. And although I didn't understand it at the time, I felt that something incredibly wrong was taking place.

But to say those images had no affect on me is not correct. They helped to foster my mistrust of authority, my contempt for humanity.

Today we take a moment to honor this man. Nobel laureate, pastor, activist, humanitarian, leader of the Civil Rights Movement, receiver of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. We recall his words and deeds with parades and speeches. But as I look around, I can only note how little has changed. The police still beating people down, the dogs still straining at their leashes, and the look of insane rage and hatred still in the faces of people.

I still mistrust authority, and my contempt for humanity remains unabated.

But if Dr. King stood for anything, it would be to tell me that peace and love, brotherhood and good will, will eventually triumph.

And that until that time, we must continue to march.