A great struggle needs a great leader to succeed. A leader who will be able to inspire his people, to lead, to express his dream in an effort to inform and educate them, paying whatever price is needed. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose memory was honored by America on Monday, was a great leader of African Americans. He was imprisoned, beaten, his human rights violated, but he remained true to his vision of a peaceful revolution to ensure the equality of his people.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” he had said. 59 years ago, on August 28, 1963, he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his historic speech titled ‘I have a dream.’ It is a speech that left its mark in history for the power of its logic, for its belief in its justice, for the superiority of its thinking and for its peaceful message about race relations in the United States of America.

“But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”

He continued: “But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
He was indeed a great leader.