King fought for the American way Published Jan. 12, 2010 By Steve Snyder Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst Public Affairs JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. -- I once asked a learned friend how he accounted for the extraordinary success of the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1960s. My friend was a chaplain, a black and an historian to boot. He countered my question by asking me another question. "Could I remember," he said, "any instance of blacks burning the American flag?" "No, I can't," I replied. "That's it," he said. "Black never attacked America's ideals. They simply asked Americans to live up to them." That philosophy may sound simple but didn't prevail until Americans fought their way through one of their most tumultuous decades ever. The passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally rectified injustices burning within the soul of the nation. They became law only after countless marches, demonstrations and blood in the streets. But tactics undergirding the actions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were probably as effective as anything in unleashing fundamental change. King believed in non-violence. He also believed in the United States Constitution, especially the Declaration of Independence which preceded it. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" rings out America's sacred writ. Dr. King heartily agreed with that most American of propositions. "We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights," he wrote in his famous letter from the Birmingham jail in 1963. In his view, the time for waiting for justice had long passed. "The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed towards gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, 'Wait.' But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you have seen the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society..." It was time for a change. But King still expressed optimism for the future, eloquently expressed in that letter from a jail in Alabama. "We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham," he roared, "and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny..." In the beginning of his famous letter, Dr. King articulated his version of the American Dream. "One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American Dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence." We celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday with a national holiday on Jan. 18. For contemporary society, he is certainly one of our founding fathers. He believed we are Americans first and children of God always. And he put his beliefs into action, leaving his country in a much better place than where he found it.