It’s important to me to make a blog post stating that I treasure MLK Day. Whenever people act surprised that the third Monday in January is a holiday, I point out “It’s MLK Day” and if they don’t understand I say “Martin Luther King’s Birthday.”

Of those who don’t understand how important MLK’s birthday is, there are probably two types. The first have hearts  hardened by lingering racist feelings that probably trace back to the society King gave his life to change. The others, many from places like California and New York, lived in progressive parts of the country and quite simply have never been aware of the things that happened in the South before King and his colleagues brought their fight for change. These may not be aware the real degree of economic oppression, not just “paying some people less” but making it impossible for families to educate and care for thier children with dignity. They often are unaware of the long-term existence and potency of the Ku Klux Klan and its lynchings, believing that it was “something that happened right after the Civil War.”

Not quite. The Jim Crow South was a terrorist-occupied country. The actions of the Klan and its supporters are much like those of Muslim terrorists and the Mafia of southern Italy today. In situations like these, without a coup or military overthrow, societal change is usually impossible. How can change occur when to oppose the system is to be marked for murder?

That’s why Martin Luther King and the civil rights leaders who worked with him are remarkable. They were able to topple a terrrorist occupation without resorting to violence. They did it with patience, with words, with reason and with love.

Martin Luther King embraced the nonviolent principles of Mahatma Ghandi to accomplish his task. Reading his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” today is a re-acquaintance with a man of God and a man of letters, of character and of bravery. He knew what he was facing, personally and for America.  

Remembering his sacrifice and that of all the civil rights leaders, last summer, my family and I took a detour on our trip to Washington DC to pass through Birmingham and visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. When we arrived, some were a little worried. We were far from home, the museum is downtown in a neighborhood still predominantly African American and we didn’t see any other white people.  And people who looked just like us were the villains in this story.

“We didn’t come all the way down here to sit in the car,” I said, and we got out.  We paid our admission and went in. For me it was just about the most moving exhibit we would see on the trip.  We learned why when my father was young it was dangerous to be a Yankee travelling in the South — suspected as a “Freedom Rider,” who came to support the black boycotts of public transit, you could be beaten up or worse. We saw detailed descriptions of what Jim Crow really meant, both the violent and the mundane. This included the dirty, half broken drinking fountain marked “colored” next to a new, clean one marked “white.” It doesn’t come across, I fear, as well in print as if you actually see it. 

We were welcomed at the museum, despite being different and despite having a bunch of rambunctious children. What struck me most was how bad things were before the movement, and how much courage the original civil rights leaders had to have to fight the entrenched and as I said terroristic system.  

If wish that anyone who doesn’t understand the MLK holiday could go to a museum like Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. This is an area where seeing is better than reading, watching actual video footage is more compelling than being told. Meanwhile, if anyone admits to not understanding MLK Day around me, they will get an earful. MLK was and is as much a patriot as any American president or leader, and he and the rest of those in the civil rights movement did incredible things for this country. We need his holiday to help us remember.