Dr. King: All Change Has Its’ Price
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Activist, clergyman, humanitarian, orator, writer, educator, Nobel Prize Winner, the list goes on. But perhaps the most effective remembrance for us at this time in Virgin Islands history is that above all else, Dr. King was an agent of change.
He understood that change had a price, and it was one he was willing to pay. He mounted each initiative with the determination that knowledge and certainty bring, and he was a student of history.
“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle,” he said. “And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom.”
And he did not bend – not after more than 20 arrests and four assaults – including the ultimate assault that led to his untimely death.
According to one biographer, King’s organizational ideals were built on Christianity; his operational strategy built on Gandhi.
He understood that leadership played a unique role in his mission of peaceful change. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus,” he said.
His life and legacy are something for us to think about as we enter this most critical time in the history of the world and the Virgin Islands. We are still witnessing the horrific aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, a humanitarian tragedy we can be sure would have moved Dr. King to empathy and action.
And on the local front, we as a community face our own challenges of moral and material uncertainty and move this year to what will be a political cycle that will most certainly change our history.
We look once more to Dr. King for guidance, as his words resonate for us today more than ever.
“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
