If you want to spend some time today celebrating Dr. King than I highly recommend this website:
The King Center was established in 1968 by Coretta Scott King. It is the official living memorial dedicated to advancing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our programs and partnerships educate the world about his life and his philosophy of nonviolence, inspiring new generations to further his work.
The archive contains hundreds of letters from and to MLK. They are fascinating to read and worthwhile for learning about segregation and the attempts to overcome it. Here is one:
SCLC Newsletter
Written by Martin Luther King, Jr.
January 3, 1963Social change is painful and at times painfully slow.
The repeal of the city’s segregation laws indicates clearly that the city fathers are realistically facing the legal death of segregation. The city is not wont to battle in the legal arena because the outcome, with all its costliness, is a foregone conclusion. In the wake of the legal retreat in Albany (GA), the public library has been opened on a 30-day “trial” basis – integrated!
To be sure, neither of these related events can be measured as a full victory, but neither do they smack of defeat for those who have championed justice, self-respect and human dignity. It does, in fact, represent a partial victory, for it vindicates the direction in which the W.G. Anderson-led forces always moved. The repeal of the segregation ordinances and the vertical integration at the public library are only projects of that which is to come.
Many prophets of doom have written Albany off as an indefinite stalemate. The most important thing that has been accomplished has been the sensitizing of the Black community to the injustices and immorality of the system of segregation.
It has been said that it is impossible to ride a man’s back unless it is bent. If nothing else, the Black citizens of Albany have straightened their backs. We say now as we have said earlier, Albany will never be the same again. You have not heard the last of that Southwest Georgia city.