15 Jan 2012 Project 21’s Stacy Swimp on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Personal Responsibility

Here are some words of wisdom from Project 21 spokesman Stacy Swimp about properly commemorating Martin Luther King Day.  They are taken from an interview that Stacy gave to Michigan Live in 2011 after he spoke at a King Day event held at Northwood University in Midland, Michigan:

This year, Stacy would like to add this lesson from a notable speech by Dr. King:

In June of 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the speech “Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution” at the Oberlin College commencement ceremony.  In that speech, he said: “There are all too many people who, in some great period of social change, fail to achieve the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands.”

After successfully leading the movement to pass the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, Dr. King was transitioning.  He was focusing on a message of personal responsibility to make the most of the freedoms won.  No longer, therefore, should we be talking about a dream. Instead, we should — as Dr. King did up until his death — be talking and walking a message of individual responsibility and making the most of a dream realized.