"I Have A Dream"

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, the youngest man to receive the Noble Peace Prize was assassinated.  I was only 9 years old at the time and didn't understand what had happened.

We lived in Denver, Colorado and I was too young to even connect where Memphis was or even relate it to Elvis.  Back then we could get 5 channels on  T.V., that's right, 5.  ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and a local station.  T.V. for us was in black and white and when the news broadcast the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr I had to ask my parents who he was.

At the age of 9 years old, growing up in Denver, I had no concept of the word discrimination.  I had no idea that people had actually posted signs at drinking fountains that read, "Whites Only".  I didn't know that in areas of the United States buses only allowed people with white skin pigmentation to ride in the front of the bus.

As years passed I never gave the color of someones skin a second thought when I made friends.  It never occurred to me to think twice about someone's ethnic background and the color their skin.  To me it was "Jesus loves the little children.  All the children of the world.  Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight."  The only difference I noticed in the different friends I had was the way they talked.  And I thought that was cool.

I can't honestly say what impact Martin Luther King Jr. had on how I viewed people back then.  At 9 years old my view of people in the world was that Jesus loved them.  Jesus didn't look at skin pigmentation and say you're acceptable because you're skin is black and you're not acceptable because your skin is white.  And I've never read anywhere in the Bible that Jesus died only for white people.  Perhaps the effect Martin Luther King Jr. had on my life is more in the awareness of man's insurmountable way of insane thinking and actions.

It was in Tucson, Arizona on January 8th that my oldest son was born and 33 years later on the same day, in the same city another crazed man with a gun decided to take lives rather than save them.  The world hasn't changed.  Mankind still hates, still murders and still needs salvation.  Mankind still seems to work at hating others while men like Martin Luther King Jr. seem to die in vain.

I used to look back on the 60's and 70's and think of what violent times those were in our society.  But again, nothing has changed.  Let's remember, at least for a day, that one man in America had a dream.