Today is actually Martin Luther King’s birthday.  (One of the few celebrations that are not muddied by our practice of Monday holidays.)  Had MLK not been murdered (and, of course, still alive), he would be turning  95 today.  He didn’t even live for 40 years, but he still left a huge imprint upon America,

Five years ago, i joined about 149 of my fellow congregants  traipsing about Selma, Alabama.  Our goal was to recreate for ourselves and our children an event that happened 60 years ago.  The March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

With tremendous awe, we realized we were walking in the shoes of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Reverend James Reeb, Joanne Bland, and a slew of others.  We also recreated  Rosa Parks’ abbreviated bus ride in Montgomery.  Morosely, I felt the pain of four young children murdered by an American terrorist at the 16^th Street Baptist Church.  Because we spent our weekend in all of these locations.

That trip helped me finally understand the part of registering Blacks to vote in Nashville, Tennessee played in the grand scheme of things.  Those efforts complemented other college students’ work to change the process in the cities of Farmville (VA), Greensboro (NC), Charleston (SC), Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma (AL), Albany (GA), Little Rock (AR), and New Orleans (LA).

Given the pervasive racism (not to mention rampant anti-Semitism) that is overtaking our great nation (starting with TheDonald- with his acceptance of neoNazi marches in Charlottesville (Virginia) and his rampant deprecation of Blacks and Hispanics (including his “Shithole Countries” characterization and “poisoning the blood” of Americans), it’s time we all reflect on the lessons that should have been learned- and sealed- by the example of the Reverend Martin Luther King’s life and the 3 Foundings of America.

MLK devoted his life to abrogating the difference between  law and practice, as it related to civil rights and economic equality.  This was the manifestation of the 3rd Founding of America.

The first founding of America began on the 4th of July 1776.   Replete with contradictions and conflicts between slavery and freedom, equality and racial dominance,the first founding convinced the nascent nation that the dissonance between those concepts could  be papered over.

But  then came the Civil War, which in its aftermath led to our Second Founding.  The conflicts of racial and civic realities were addressed by the modifications to the US Constitution.  The 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments  (1865) stipulated the abolishment of slavery, the establishment of birthright citizenship, the equal protection under the law, and voting rights for Black men.  All of these  were codified into law. .

But there was a vast difference between ideals and practice   It took the actions of the 1960s to address begin to address the difference between American practice and the rule of law.  The 1960 Civil Rights Law, 1964 Civil Rights  Act (1964),  and the Voting Rights Act (1965) were the attempts to eradicate the Jim Crow ‘Laws’ and practices within the USA.   These were the focus of the Reverend Martin Luther King; his primary cause and principle until his assassination on 4 April 1968 in Memphis TN.

You can see the effects that our recreated march had on the adults and the children – our observations have been enshrined in print.  

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