King Day: Holiday for the common good

What I like best about the Martin Luther King holiday is its emphasis on community - on the common good. That makes it unique among American holidays.

If one thinks about the other holidays -- Christmas and Thanksgiving, for example - the emphasis is on turning inward to family and friends. In many ways, that's easier to do.

It is much harder to reach beyond the regular ties we have - to reach across lines of race, religion and ethnicity - to establish new friendships, new connections.

The MLK holiday (Monday, Jan. 16) gives us an opportunity -- an "excuse" if you will -- to start. One has to be careful, though, that the holiday is not reduced to telling old stories about the civil rights movement. Remembering the "good old days," and stopping there, is especially a hazard among people my age. It's easy to fall into that. One reason is that things seem so much clearer now -- in retrospect.

It is a lot harder to improve race relations and search for the common good right now. Things seem so much more murky when we are in the midst of them.

During the 10 years I edited the Palo Altan newspaper (Palo Alto, Calif., 1979-1989) we tried to do something special each year for the King holiday. One year we published a special section called "Resources for teaching interracial understanding." Another year it was a section called "Resources for teaching peace."

Each year we searched for a new quote from King to publish on the front page of the issue nearest the birthday holiday. We tried to choose a quote that was lesser known, rather than one from the "I have a dream speech" or the "Letter from a Birmingham jail."

I think my favorite of those we published was the one we used in 1969. It was excerpted from a speech King gave shortly before his death.

"Every now and then I think about my own death. And I think about my own funeral...I don't want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long...

"Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel prize. Tell them not to mention
that I have 300 or 400 other prizes...

"I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King tried to give his life serving others. Say that I was a drum major for justice, say that I was a drum major for peace, say that I was a drum major for righteousness and all of the other shallow things will not matter.

"I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I want to leave a committed life behind."

Besides the opportunity to reach others and make new connections, the King holiday also offers us a chance to stop and take stock. How are we doing, both as individuals and communities, when it comes to creating an environment free of racism and prejudice?

There remain many personal and institutional barriers to this. We are still so
easily isolated by race in our neighborhoods, in our jobs and elsewhere. And there is the related problem of economic isolation.

Making change is difficult. A person can easily become weary and discouraged. But King's words and life remind us that it is possible -- and worth the effort.