Today the nation celebrates the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a great man who has changed the face of America. Although some people in America feel that King should not be honored, namely the New Hampshire legislature, King is indeed more than worthy of this day. Through his activism for civil and human rights for all people, King has prepared Americans to move into the 21st century.
King was a pastor who had a B.A. from Morehouse College, a B.D. from Crozer Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston University. King was chosen as Time Man of the Year and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Like all of us here at Dartmouth, King was a scholar.
As Dartmouth students who will be some of the future leaders of the U.S., we can reflect back upon King's words in order to help us be the best role models and leaders for this upcoming new century. King said that "freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed." As Dartmouth students, we all fall into the trap of living self-contained lives. We all tend to have similar friends, spend time worrying about grades and/or what frat party to go to, and most of us are usually very unaware of what is happening in the outside world. In a history of education class, a Dartmouth professor asked students three classes in a row about current events, and not one student had a clue.
This apathy in our community is really pathetic since we are considered to be "the best and the brightest." We need this day to reflect back upon the work of King so that we, the leaders of tomorrow, can fight to make the world a better place for the poor, the aged, the diseased and the disabled and the minority groups who still experience racism and discrimination today. We tend to forget about the Latino population which will be the largest minority group by the year 2000. We also tend to believe that the poor and the inner city inhabitants are lost causes, and that we should not waste our precious tax dollars helping them. Instead, we continue to let rich citizens and companies such as IBM and Proctor and Gamble become richer while we let the rural areas and the urban centers decay even more. More than 30 years ago when King gave his famous "I Have a Dream Speech," he urged all Americans to join hands, and to fight not only against racism, but also against poverty and other social ills in our society. Dartmouth students have an obligation to fight for these same issues today. They have not all miraculously disappeared in the past 30 years.
1996 is an important year. We will be electing a new president of the United States and other officials. The next president will serve into the next century. Based on the fact that most of the candidates are white males, many are wealthy and most have never experienced racism, poverty or economic depravation, I question whether many of them can truly relate to the real needs of most Americans. For most of them, their hypocrisy is evident. Therefore, we can appreciate a leader like King, an African-American male who has left a legacy because he transformed America. The leaders of today need to remember and implement the ideals and transepts which allowed King to transform America during his lifetime.
We as Dartmouth students, the so-called "cream of the crop," need to change our behavior immediately. We are moving into a century where it will be crucial to know another language (such as Spanish); where we will need to interact with and eventually truly come to hear and respect the voices of the "minorities" of this country who will quickly enough become the "majority"; where we perhaps will have a permanent underclass of Americans because the rich were too concerned about fighting over family values and affirmative action that they lost touch with the "real America."
We, the future leaders of America should use this holiday to honor King because not only was he a true leader, his memory keeps us cognizant of the fact that one day we, the future leaders of America, will only look like fools if we don't stop being so self-centered and instead focus on the "real America." Just because we're privileged to attend Dartmouth does not mean that others do not have the same rights as we do. After all, we only represent just a fraction of America.
