More to King than four words

                On Monday, we'll celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. As time goes by, King's persona is often that of a man standing in front of a microphone giving his famous  "I have a dream" speech.

                But King was much more than a sound bite or a paragraph in a history book. Like many Americans, he was born poor. Growing up, he thought he was getting a good education, but when he got to college, King realized he was far behind the other white students. He studied, caught up and graduated from Boston University.

                His fight for civil rights began in 1954, and by 1955 he was one of the leaders in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. But King decided to follow a non-violent path for racial equality, and he was rewarded with having his home bombed, being arrested over 20 times and assaulted at least four times.

                At the age of 35, King was the youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and he turned the $54,000 in prize money over to the furtherance of the civil rights movement. In 1968, he was senselessly assassinated, and the world lost a peaceful visionary.

                Over the years, I forgot most of what I knew about Dr. King. I mentally put him in a narrow category as a civil rights leader and felt sad when stories surfaced of his supposed extramarital affairs.

                But one day, I decided to read some of his writings to see for myself what King had to say and pulled up one of his most famous writings, "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."  I read every word, and was absolutely fascinated.

                King wrote the letter in 1963 while sweltering in a hot jail cell in Birmingham, Ala. The letter was written in the margins of newspapers and on the backs of legal papers and quietly smuggled out.

                The letter was not only an incredibly insightful reflection on the country, King's words became the philosophical foundation of the Civil Rights movement.

                King wrote he was in jail because injustice was there and he couldn't sit idly by and watch what was happening. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," he stated, and whatever "affects one of us affects us all."

                King describes the anguish Negros endured when they saw their mothers and fathers lynched. He wailed about the 20 million Negros living in poverty in an affluent society and how he had to explain to his 6-year-old daughter that she couldn't go to a public amusement park because she was the wrong color.

                I was so moved by "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," I read the entire "I Have a Dream" speech. It's easy to come away with only the last few lines but that's unfortunate because one misses some of the best civil rights thoughts ever put down on paper.

                "Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood," King states. He warns of drinking from the cup of bitterness and hate and urges people to rise to newer heights and not hate people for the color of their skin.

                His hope is deeply rooted in the American dream that all men are created equal and that, one day, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together.

                As many of us relax on a national holiday, let us remember the words of Dr. King. If we can take a nation that's still divided 40 years later and bring her together, there will be a "beautiful symphony of brotherhood."

                And from that vantage, all people can sing together "let freedom ring."

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald newspaper.