Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day Everyone!
Cheers to another American holiday celebrating freedom! Whenever I learn about countries that still encourage segregation and conduct the slave trade in our modern day, I become so much more thankful for this country. Our history is filled with men and women from all backgrounds who have striven to make all men free. It’s no wonder millions of people flock to live here; this is the best place in the whole world for anyone to live out their life in liberty.
Only in America are your wildest dreams even possible! Looking back on our past history, even the most disenfranchised groups were able to RISE UP against the naysayers and LIVE their American dream. People like Madame C.J. Walker, Louis Armstrong, Booker T. Washington, Hattie McDaniel, and Nat King Cole are forever inspirations to me. Despite living through cultures of animosity, they never wavered in chasing their goals. THESE are the types of people, along with MLK, that inspire me the most. They fought against the negative stigmas, and embodied what it meant to be an amazing American.
His “I have a dream” speech is so powerful, but these last lines are my favorite (below). To fight discrimination, we had to be united in our principles of freedom. Only when we found unity as liberty-loving Americans could we say, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning: “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
If you want to be free to think your own thoughts, provide for yourself, and chase your dreams, America is the absolute best place to be. I am forever grateful for an American leader like MLK for inspiring another generation of Americans to come closer and closer to fulfilling the goals of the Declaration of Independence.
Happy Monday!
Madeline Eliza
2 Corinthians 3:17