Being What We Ought To Be
In preparation for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I reread the text of a sermon MLK gave days before his assassination, entitled Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution. One section stood out for me. Dr. King, referencing the Declaration of Independence, extolled:
‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.’ But if a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists. We are coming to ask America to be true to the huge promissory note that it signed years ago.