Dreams

     Today is a federal holiday, a day set aside by congress in 1983 to honor the man Martin Luther King Jr.

      King was born in 1929 and eventually became an African American Baptist minister and is considered to be the main leader of the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1950's and 1960's. He had a magnificent speaking ability, and his eloquent pleas won the support of millions of people-blacks and whites-and made him internationally famous.

      Under his leadership, the civil rights movement won wide support among whites, and laws that had barred integration in the Southern States were abolished. and in 1964 he won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for leading nonviolent (which he based on Christian teachings,) civil rights demonstrations. In spite of King's stress on nonviolence, he often became the target of violence and in 1968 he became the target of an assassin who shot and killed him.

      In 1980, an area including King's birthplace, church, and burial place became the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site. In 1991, the National Civil Rights Museum opened at the site of King's assassination in Memphis.

      It was Martin Luther King, Jr who on Aug. 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. gave the famous speech "I Have a Dream," a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal."

      What kind of dreams do you have?

      Dear Lord, Thank you

• For the dreams you give us
• For the hope they bring