Why we celebrate…..
The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Committee, Inc., (MLKCC) was founded to provide meaningful opportunities for the Broward community to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. King. In fulfilling this mission it is important that we as members of the board of directors for the MLKCC organization to reflect on the reason for the King Holiday as well as the contributions of the man who fostered its existence.
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday celebrates the life and legacy of a man who sowed the seeds of hope and healing in America. We commemorate as well the timeless values he taught us through his example—the values of courage, truth, justice, compassion, dignity, humility and service that so radiantly defined Dr. King’s character and empowered his leadership. On this holiday, we commemorate the universal, unconditional love, forgiveness and nonviolence that empowered his revolutionary spirit.
The King Holiday honors the life and contributions of America’s greatest champion of racial justice and equality, the leader who not only dreamed of a color-blind society, but how also led a movement that achieved historic reforms to help make it a reality.
The day also commemorates Dr. King’s great dream of a vibrant, multiracial nation united in justice, peace and reconciliation; a nation that has a place at the table for children of every race and room at the inn for every needy child. We are called on this holiday, not merely to honor, but to celebrate the values of equality, tolerance and inter-racial sister and brotherhood he so compellingly expressed in this great dream for America.
We commemorate on this holiday the leader and the visionary who embraced the unity of all faiths in love and truth. And though Dr. King was an American, on this holiday we must also venerate the global leader who inspired nonviolent liberation movements around the world.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday is not only for celebration and remembrance, education and tribute, but above all a day of service. All across America on the King Holiday, his followers perform services in hospitals and shelters and prisons and wherever people need some help. It is a day of volunteering to feed the hungry, rehabilitate housing, tutoring whose who can’t read, consoling the broken-hearted and a thousand other projects building the beloved community of his dream.
The MLKCC organization call you to commemorate this holiday by making your personal commitment to serve humanity with the vibrant spirit of unconditional love that was Dr. King’s greatest strength and which empowered all of the great victories of his leadership. And with our hearts open to this spirit of unconditional love, we can indeed achieve Martin Luther King, Jr.’ s dream and carry forward his legacy into the 21st century and beyond.
Wayne L. Alexander, Chair of the MLKCC Board of Directors
