[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 185 (Thursday, October 21, 2021)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1129-E1130]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   CELEBRATING TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. 
                                MEMORIAL

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 21, 2021

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I rise to mark the 10th anniversary 
of the dedication of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on 
the Tidal Basin, between the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials.
  The location of this Memorial, the only memorial on the Mall 
dedicated to a person not an office holder or employed by the United 
States, is especially fitting, situated as it is between the author of 
the Declaration of Independence, which contained the audacious boast 
that ``we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are 
created equal and born with certain inalienable rights,'' and the 
greatest of all American presidents, the Great Emancipator Abraham 
Lincoln, who understood that this nation could not survive ``half slave 
and half free'' and preserved the Union through the great contest, 
testing whether this nation, or any nation, can long endure.''
  Dr. Martin Luther King was a dreamer but he was not just an idle 
daydreamer; he had an active faith that led him to share his vision of 
the beloved community where equal justice and institutions were facts 
of life.
  When Jefferson wrote he Declaration of Independence in 1776, 
declaring ``that all Men are Created Equal,'' it was equally true that 
at that time and for centuries to come, African-Americans were 
historically, culturally, and legally excluded from inclusion in that 
declaration.
  Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's ``I Have a Dream'' Speech, 
delivered 50 years ago, on August 28, 1963, was a clarion call to each 
citizen of this great nation that we still hear today.
  The request was simply and eloquently conveyed--he asked America to 
allow of its citizens to live out the words written in its Declaration 
of Independence and to have a place in this nation's Bill of Rights.
  The 1960s were a time of great crisis, conflict, and promise.
  The dreams of the people of this country were filled with troubling 
images that arose like lava from the nightmares of violence and the 
crises they had to face, both domestically and internationally.
  It was the decade of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and 
the assassinations of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Malcolm X, 
Presidential Candidate Robert Kennedy, and the man in whose honor the 
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial is dedicated.
  Dr. Martin Luther King's dream helped us turn the corner on civil 
rights.
  It started with a peaceful march for suffrage that started in Selma, 
Alabama on March 7, 1965--a march that ended with violence at the hands 
of law enforcement officers as the marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus 
Bridge.
  But the dream did not die there.
  Dr. King led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, often with Rosa Parks, a 
boycott that lasted for 381 days, and ended when the United States 
Supreme Court outlawed as unconstitutional racial segregation on all 
public transportation.
  Dr. King used several nonviolent tactics to protest against Jim Crow 
Laws in the South and he organized and led demonstrations for 
desegregation, labor and voting rights.
  When the life of Dr. Martin Luther King was stolen from us, he was a 
very young 39 years old.
  People remember that Dr. King died in Memphis, but few can remember 
why he was there.

[[Page E1130]]

  On that fateful day in 1968 Dr. King came to Memphis to support a 
strike by the city's sanitation workers.
  The garbage men there had recently formed a chapter of the American 
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees to demand better 
wages and working conditions.
  But the city refused to recognize their union, and when the 1,300 
employees walked off their jobs the police broke up the rally with mace 
and billy clubs.
  It was then that union leaders invited Dr. King to Memphis.
  Despite the danger he might face entering such a volatile situation, 
it was an invitation he could not refuse.
  Not because he longed for danger, but because the labor movement was 
intertwined with the civil rights movement for which he had given up so 
many years of his life.
  The death of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., will never 
overshadow his life; that is his legacy as a dreamer and a man of 
action.
  It is a legacy of hope, tempered with peace; it is a legacy not quite 
yet fulfilled.
  I hope that Dr. King's vision of equality under the law is never lost 
to us, who in the present, toil in times of unevenness in our equality.
  For without that vision--without that dream--we can never continue to 
improve on the human condition.
  For those who have already forgotten, or whose vision is already 
clouded with the fog of complacency, I would like to recite the 
immortal words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

       ``I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia 
     the sons of former slaves and the sons of former shareholders 
     will be able to sit down together at the table of 
     brotherhood.
       I have a dream that one day even the State of Mississippi, 
     a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering 
     with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an 
     oasis of freedom and justice.
       I have a dream that my four little children will one day 
     live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color 
     of their skin, but for the content of their character.
       I have a dream today.
       I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its 
     vicious racists, with its Governor having his lips dripping 
     with words of interposition and nullification--one day right 
     there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be 
     able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as 
     sisters and brothers.
       I have a dream today.
       I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, 
     every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough place 
     will be made plain and the crooked places will be made 
     straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and 
     all flesh shall see it together.''

  Dr. King's dream did not stop at racial equality, his ultimate dream 
was one of human equality and dignity.
  There is no doubt that Dr. King supported freedom and justice for 
every individual in America and he was in midst of planning the 1968 
Poor People's Campaign for Jobs and Justice when he was struck down by 
the dark deed of an assassin on April 4, 1968.
  Therefore, it is for us, the living, to continue that fight today and 
forever, in the great spirit that inspired the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther 
King, Jr.
  In his 1837 Lyceum Address titled ``The Perpetuation of Our Political 
Institutions,'' Abraham Lincoln warned that mobs or people who 
disrespected U.S. laws and courts would always pose the most dangerous 
threat to the perpetuation of United States:

       ``All the armies of Europe and Asia . . . could not by 
     force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the 
     Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if 
     destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and 
     finisher.''

  But Lincoln advised us of the best defense against domestic threats 
and attacks on our democracy: public reverence for the Constitution and 
rule of law as ``the political religion of our nation.''
  Madam Speaker, democracy in America is not an act, it is an activity; 
it is never finished or complete but always in the process of making 
our union more perfect; and the nation will always be confronted with 
challenge of confirming the proposition that this nation, or any nation 
conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all are 
created equal can long endure.
  Since the assassination of President Lincoln, who extended malice 
toward but charity for all, no one understood this better than the Rev. 
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  That is why he is one of the greatest Americans to have graced our 
Nation.
  That is why he is so worthy of the national honor of the Rev. Dr. 
Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.