What did Martin Luther King, Jr. bequeath to humanity that continues, even into the third millennium, to cause people to revere him and embrace his legacy? This is the question that this writer, who considers himself to have been King's first civil rights secretary, proposes to answer in this discouerse. But before answering this question I want to present some relevant biographical data about King.

King was born on January 15, 1929 to Alberta Williams King and Martin Luther King., Sr., in the City of Atlanta, where he attended public school and earned his bachelor's degeee at Morehouse College. He recieved a bachelor of divininy degee from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester Pennsylvania and a Ph.D., degree from Boston University. On Septermber 5, 1954, he became the resident pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

On Monday, December 5, 1955, four days after the arrest of Rosa Parks on December 1, on charges that she had violated the desegregation laws of Alabama by refusing to give up her bus seat to a white male bus passenger, King and seventeen other Montgoemery leaders (including this writer) organize the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to be the organization that leaders would use to plan and conduct activities that would promote and manage the Montgomery Bus Boycott that had begun that very day, about eigth hours earlier, before the MIA had been formed. During the organization of the MIA, King was elected to be it's president. As leader of that organization, he went on to provide leadership for the 382-day long successful bus boycott that ended after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Montgomery's and Alabama's bus segregagtion laws were unconstitutonal.

Subsequently, King was the principal founder and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. For more than a decade SCLC conducted sit-ins, freedom rides, voter registration campaigns, staged marches, including the August 1963 March on Washington. Nearly one-third of a million people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to hear King deliver a speech that has become as endearing to many Americans as President Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysberg Address." At a later time, King protested America's involvement in the Vietnam War. He was jailed many times for having participaed in civil-disobedience demonstations. King was in Memphis participating in a Sanitation Workers' protest when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, allegedly by James Earl Ray. Ray who was given a life sentence for the crime, but until his death some twenty years later, never admitted that he killed King. There are many other people, including King's wife Coretta Scott King, who believe that Ray did not kill King, but that a conspiracy was responsible for his death. Some of those who believe that it was a conspiracy that killed King inlclude Ray in the conspiracy, but others contend that he was not involved in King's assassination.

King was selected as Time Magazine's "Man of the Year" in 1956, awareded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and the United States Congress and the President approved the National Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday. Although King had many other achievements, it is now clear that he contributed magnanimously, noteworthily and praiseworthily to the advancement of African Americans and in making America a better place for all Americans. His fame has spread throughout the world.

What then is the legacyof Martin Luther King., Jr.? According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, a legacy is defined as "something received from an ancestor, a predecessor, or from the past." As a working definition for this discourse, a legacy is defined as "something that has liberating and redemptive efficacy for its beneficiareies and impacts a signficant population such as a nation."

A legacy can be negative or positive. Or, it can be both negative and positive, as is true of King's legacy. Sometimes it is the negative aspects rather than the positive aspects of a legfacy that account for its permanency. Just because a legacy has a negative component, that does not mean that it should be ignored or considered to be of less value. Indeed, the positive component, as is true of King's legacy, may be of such that it, while not rendering the negative aspects as inconsequential, is so noble and of such redemptive value that its supremacy remains impeachable. Let us now consider the negative aspects of King's legacy. They are:

1. Nonviolence. King taught and required tht his followers be nonviolent. One of the most noble commitments a person can make is to be responsible, to take the "responsible vow." This should be done by a person at an early age. The responsible person answers the question, "What is the responsible thing to do in this specific situation?" The matter of self-preservation is taken seeriously by the responible person and he will defend himself against his destruction whenever it is in his power to do so. Think for a moment about people you know who have suffered needlessly, faced death or seen these things happen to people they care about because thay or someone else who could have made a difference refused to be violent when it was clear that violence was the only remedy or viable option. There was not anything that happened during the Montgomery Bus Boycott or since that has caused me to change my mind about the need for me to reject the nonviolence approach that King advocated and asked bus protesters to embrace. Reality and love more than suggest that neither violence or nonviolence should be accepted as the single approach to be appplied in living a creative and happy life. Standing in a responsible posture, a person will employ violence or nonviolence in an endeavor to create the greatest good possible.

2. Passive Resistance. Although passive resistance appears to be closely related to nonviolence it has its own specificity. Passive resistance runs counter to life, which is dynamnic. That dynamism is expressed in a budding flower, heard when birds sing, and in the cry of a newborn baby. Passive resistance is a defensive tactic. And while there are times and circumstances when it is appropriate to be passive, even times when it is the prudent thing to do, there are many more times and circumstances which demand that we be assertive and even aggressive. This can be especially true when justice is being pursued. Translated, this means being on the offensive rather than the defensive, acting ather than reacting, and being a "doer" rather than a person or object "done to." Passive resistance suppresses or blocks creativity and spontaneity, makes it difficult for a person to be peculiarly himself or capable of expressing his uniqueness. In order for a a person to be in charge of himself, he has to reject passive resistance as a preferred behavioral pattern. Instead, he has to be assertive and express himself freely and forthrightly with the realization that he is a child of the Universe and has a right to be here on Planet Earth as much as any other creature or thing. I cannot recall many times when passive resistance helped us during the Montgomery Bus Boycott to accomplish our objective. However, I can think of many times when its opposite, dynamic insistence, made a positive difference.

3. Dream Possessed. According to the news media and people who choose to ignore or minimize the significance of the meaning of the message King delivered on August 23, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington his speech is called the "I Have a Dream" speech. While it is true that toward the end of his speech he began at least five statements with "I have a dream," that was not the essential message of his speech. In that speech, King informed and challenge white Americans to "Judge African Americans by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin." He said that the prommissory note guaranteeing basic freedoms had come back marked "insufficient funds," and he asserted that "black people refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt." King called upon white America, ultimately the United States Government, to pay the long overdue payment that is due black Americans which for those of us who knew him best also knew that he meant payment of reparations to black people for244 year of enslavement of their ancestors. He challenge Americans to live out the American Creed set forth in the Declaration of Independene that says:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Those who read King's speech with an open mind will readily understand that his speech was not a "dream speech," and should not be referred to as such. On that hot summer day, King called for a radical change that would eradicate racism, poverty and injustice in the American society. While it is also true that in his speech he said that his "I have a dream" is rooted in the "American Dream," neither the "I have a Dream" or the "American Dream" is a worthy goal for black folk to pursue. Freedom, justice and equality are not just American. They are desired and pursued by all human beings, not as a dream but as a reality.

King was famaliar with these words spoken by the Prophet Joel who said, "Your old men shall dream dreams, but your young men shall see visions (Joel 2:28). King was a young man, at the time 34 years of age. Need I say more. And I have also heard him recite these words that are found in one of the wisdom books of the Bible that says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." (Proverbs 29:18). And why this negative aspect of King's legacy is not fully of his making, but of those who interpret and present his mesasge as the "I Have a Dream" mischaracterization of his essential mesasge, it still must be considered a part of his legacy.

Now let us turn to the positive aspects of King's legacy. It bears repeating here: the positive components of one's legacy should not be rejected just because it co-exists with the negative components of his legacy.

1. Self-Respect. King believed that if a person had self-respect that he would also respect other people. He considered self-respect to be a moral attribute and an imperative for moral man. Self-respect propelled by love, enables a person to be his best. He admonished people to be the best. He would say, "sweep streets like Michelangelo painted and like Beethoven wrote music." To make this point he would sometimes quote this poem by Douglass Mallock:

If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill Be a scrub in the valley -- but be the best little scrub by the side of the hill. Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway just be a trails If you can't be the sun be a star: It isn't by size that you win or fail ... Be the best of whatever you are.

2. Confront Exploiters. King demonstrated that it is important to confront exploiters, and he felf that we should do it with the conviction that right will win. To him, confrontation meant that the challenger would carry out his own will in opposition to the will of the person or entity being challenged. Engaging in civil disobedience, protest marches, sit-ins and non-cooperation with evil were some of the ways King confronted exploiters. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is a classsic example of non-cooperation with the "powers that be." The modus operandi employed in the bus boycott involved various methods and techniques that fit into the confrontative mystique.

3. Massive Desegregation. King's leadership contributed immensely in bringing about more integration in thirteen years than had been secured in all the years America had existed as a sovereign nation. Many of the inequities that Americans of African descent experienced before King's assault on the American system of segregagtion and racial discrimination have been eliminated or greatly reduced: in pubic transportation, employment and education. African Americans now have access to public facilities such as restaurants and hotels and open housing. They have the right to vote. These things can be attributed to King's leadership. Most signfiicantly, his leadership helped to change the way laws would be supportive of black people. Simply put they would make it possible for a black person to go to court and win when he had been the victim of racial discrimination. This is not to say that all the inequities and exclusions black people faced before King's assault on segregation have disappeared. And since his death some achievements made during his lifetime have been lost or eroded. Many schools have become resegregated, affirmative action has been all but eliminated and black men, especially young black men, are currently being imprisoned on a scale not heretofore heard of, accounting for America holding the dubious distinction of being the "world's number one jailer." But thanks to King's leadership blacks are enjoying more opportunites and privileges of citizenship than ever before.

4. Practice Community. King taught that we can have "community or chaos, but not both." And he challenged humankind to practice community. Sometimes he called this way of being the "practice of community" and at other times he called it the "Beloved Community." Emphasizing community he said, "Community is a relationship where people live together, respect each other and share themselves and their resources with each other." To illustrate the importance of community he would say, "We will live together or we will die separately." He observed that in community, "No link is any weaker than its strongest link." His answer to the question: How do we know that we are practicing community? is, We know that we are practicing comumntiy when what we do contributes to creating and promoting oneness. For King practicing community is a principle just the same as justice or love.

5. Spiritual Ultimacy. King believed that humans are spirutal beings and that spiritual power is the strongest power in the universe. He saw himself as a spiritual person and a Christian minister and he never ceased to maintain a faith-centeredness and a church-connectedness. Despite the pressure some people put on him and the attempts they made to get him to denounce or refuse to acknoweldge his religous identity, he never forsook his role as a minister. King said that he did not have any conflict in being both a civil rights leader and a minister. For him they both were compatible. As a matter of fact, he drew heavily upon his minister self to enhance his civil rights leader self. And he was convinced not only that spiritual power is the strongest power in the univese, but that it was the only power that could effectively confront political power that is characteristically coercive and controlling, and as such it accounts for most of the injustice and human misery that afflicts society. On several occasions I heard him say that he was sent by God and that he was engaged in God's work. He never doubted that God would see him through his difficulties regardless of how insurmountable they may appear to be. I never heard Kings say anything to suggest or indicate that he believed that a non-Christian religious person was less than a Christian person. He would say, "we are all God's children, including the non-professing religious person." There is much to indicate that he believed every human being who has a soul is religious.

6. White Women Awakening. It was only after King led black people in effectively challenging the white man to remove segregation barriers black people had faced did white women become sufficiently motivated to engage in a struggle to secure equality for themselves. Apparently, they became convinced that if black people, men and women, could successfully challenge the white supremacy system that elevated white men over other people (their fathers, husbands and brothers), they could do likewise. To say that white women have kept a keen eye on black men, but also on black women, is no exaggeration. It was only after black men were granted the right to vote following the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitutiton that was ratified on March 30, 1870, did white women engage in struggle to secure their right to vote which was granted fifty years later after the ratification of the Ninenteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on August 26, 1920. In the South, the Ku Klux Klan was organized to violently prevent black men from voting after the Fifteenth Amendment went into effect. Their tactics included lynching. Many states and federal govermental officials were either members of the Ku Klux Klan or felt powerless to resist Klansmen. The goverment abdicated its responsiblity by failing to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment, something that should have been done even if it meant using the same methods to deal with the Ku Klux Klan that was used to deal with the South when Southern states attempted to secede from the uinion. (Had the Civil War been fought until a decisive victiory was achieved and leaders of the Confederacy tried in court the Ku Klu Klan could not have existed, with immunity).

During the last thirty years white women, usnig many of the tactics black people used in the fifties and sixties, have been highly successful in gaining access to opportunities that had been available only to white men. They have made phenomenal progress in achieving equality with white men and in narrowing the gap between themselves and their counterpart, meaning white men, more than it has been narrowed between black people and white people. Today, white women are doing nearly everything white men are doing, including fighting wars. This is a far cry from several generations earlier when their grandfathers and great-grandfathers put their grandmothers and great-grandmothers on pedestals and hailed them collectively the "weaker sex." That sounds like a contradiction.

7. Empowerment of Non-Black Minorities. Before King led blacks in protesting for their civil rights, many non-black minorities seemed to have been satisfied in just being treated by white people a little better than black people were treated by them. I have heard some black people and some non-black minoirities sum up the level of justice non-blacks minorities received using those very same words. Before King led the civil rights movement, Latinos voted in small numbers that could not be justifed by the size of their population. They appeared to have been contented to let white people represent them, particuarly in govermernt, but also in non-govermental affairs. This was generally true with all non-black minorities, not just Latinos, in America, except for the Jews (who are also white). It was as if non-black minorties believed that they were not entitled to the same rights, privileges, opportunities and responsibilities as white people. It was obvious that they did not enjoy the same citizenship rights as white people. Since King's civil rights crusade, Latinos in particular, have made considerable progress. They now have real political power resulting from a significant increase number of registered voters they have and in the number of people they have elected to political offices. Indeed, they have become a political power to be recknoned with since King led the fight to secure voting rights for black people. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution gave them that right many years ago, but it was only after King raised their consciousness through his crusade to secure equal justice, under the law, for all did they register to vote in significant numbers. And signficantly, Latinos have employed some of the same methods and strategies as King to gain greater access to the ballot box and other boxes that previously they did not have access to. However, they did not have to fight to open some of the doors to some boxes because King had fought to open them, not just to blacks but to Latinos. Clearly, Latinos are no longer just settling for what white leaders decide that is best for them, but are determning for themselves what actions they need to take in order to advance their own agenda in a society where white supremacy continues to reign as is evident in the amount of control white people have over non-white citizens and the vast pecentage of the wealth they possess.

Among the other non-black minortiies positively impacted by King's past civil rights leadership are the people of Asian decent, including Japanese who were placed in containment centers, American-style concentation camps, also called interment camps, during World War II, Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Indians who are descendants of native India. Also included are other people of color who call America home and black Americans from Africa whose ancestors did not cross the Atlantic on slave ships during the Middle Passage but came by arirplane, with few exceptions, since slavery was abolished in America. Also blacks of enslaved countries outside of America.

... Native Americans also called Indians, but never mind nobody never asked them their name, the most mistreated people in America, have on occasions applied King's approach of direct action with a touch of Sitting Bull acumen in seeking justice. King sometimes spoke of the mistreatment that Indians received at the hand of the white man and challenged white America to share the resources of this land in a more equitable way with Native Americans.

Homosexuals, gays and lesbians, have come out of the closet since the civil rights years. It is apparent that they have employed some of the tactics as King in their endeavor to be accepted. They have been involved in protest marches, most notably among them their gay and lesbians parades designed to declare their personhood visibility...

Disable people have also benefited from King's practices. They have engaged in direct action in seeking justice. Some AIDS vicitims and other disable people have "acted-up." That is what some white people accused King of doing.

Before making a closing statement, I want to state that even though I have talked about King in such a ways the reader might get the impression that King single-handedly led the civil rights movement, that was not the case, nor do I want to infer that misunderestanding. King would be the first person to give a lot of people and organizations credit for the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and other civil-rights feats and advances that followed. He realized, as I do, that there were other leaders and people who make it possible for him to provide leadership that would advance the civil rights agenda and effect social change....

And now the end is near. The evening shadows appear. It is the day before King's death. He had come to Memphis to participate in a second march that was aimed at securing justice for sanitation workers. He had not been at the first march that occured a week earlier when there was violence. He applauded what the protesters were doing to secure justice but he wanted nonviolence to prevail. The local leaders, including Rev. James Lawson, pastor of a local church, who for several years had been King's chief nonviolent trainer, asked him to come to Memphis and particiate in the march and assist them in obtaining justice.

On that very night King delivered his last public message at the Church of God in Christ's Mason Temple. He told his audience about the bomb threat on his plane that morning and rumors that some people in Memphis were threatening him, too. In his final public message, speaking prophetically and seemingly with clairvoyance and a premonition he said:

Well, I don't know what will happen now, We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really dosen't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And so I'm happy tonight. I'm not worrried about anything, I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

My prayer and charge, and it is a mandate as well, to readers of this volume and to those they share this message with is: resolve to consciously embrace the "Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr." with the awareness that each individual has to work out his owrn personal salvaiton for himself in fear and trembling, but that we can help one another to find meaning, and in doing this we become better and we help to create a better world. But we and the world are still in the making. These are things King realized and endeavored to assist others in knowing, and knowing to commit to do good and work for the creation of a just society.

King is one of the few extraordinarily gifted and distinguished Masters of all human existence who have kept alive the "Paradise Regained" hope that is rooted in the divine promise that we can have a just society. This is our inheritance." From eternity King speaks to our salient spirits saying, "Claim your inheritance!" Dare we, beneficiaries of his legacy forget to treasure it and to transmit it to our children and teach them to pass it on to their children so that it will live in perpetuity.

(Uriah J. Fields, electronic mail, January 13, 2012)

(From Inside the Montgomery Bus Boycott: My Personal Story by Uriah J. Fields, pp. 165ff.")

Uriah J. Fields was the original secretary of the Montgomery Improvement Association which provided organizational leadership for the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the first civil rights secretary for Martin Luther King., Jr.