Thursday, January 20th, 2011 11:09:30

A Life of Service, Not a Day of Service

This past Monday, we celebrated the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated when he was only 39 years old. He would have turned 82 this year. This is the perfect time to think through the legacy and the lessons we should take from his too-short life.

He delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963, from in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. It was 100 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln. About 250,000 people gathered that day: black, white, young, old, Northerners and Southerners, to be a part of a “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

Today, with unemployment hovering near 10 percent and a burgeoning deficit, Americans could use another “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”