Sixty years ago, as of December 5, 2015, four days after Rosa Paks was arrested for refusing to give her bus seat to a white person, the day of her trial, first day of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, day of the first mass meeting of the bus boycott attended by 4,000 people, and the day the Montgomery Improvement Association  (MIA) was founded of which Martin Luther King, Jr., pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, was elected president and Uriah U. J. Fields, pastor of the Bell Street Baptist Church, was elected secretary of the organization that conducted the 382-day bus boycott that culminated with the Supreme Court's decision  that desegregated Montgomery, Alabama.

Approval of the National Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday by the  U. S. Congress and the President, awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, Time Magazine's "Man of the Year," and establishment of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial in Washington, D. C., connote the immensity of King's contributions to humankind. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968 at the  age of 39.  

While there ae negative aspects of the legacy of  Dr. King that include the exclusive practice of nonviolence, the practice of passive resistance when dynamic insistence is appropriate and characterization of the speech he delivered on August 23, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington as "I Have a Dream," which misrepresents his demand for justice and equality for African Americans and other people denied their citizenship rights, the positive aspects of his legacy greatly outwieigh the negative aspects. They are self-determination, confronting exploiters, massive desegregation, practice of community, ultimacy of spirituality, awakening of white women, empowerment of non-black minorities - Asian-Americans, Latinos, Cubans Native Americans, homosexuals and disabled people. The next two groups to yet benefit from his legacy are the incarcerated and homeless.

King's legacy is a gift for humanity that has been paid for sacrificially. It is efficacious and redemptive. Dare beneficiaries to forget to treasure it and to transmit it to their children and teach them to pass it on to their children so it will live in perpetuity.

Copyright 2015 by Uriah J. Fields

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