In his book “Strength to Love” Martin Luther King Jr., a devout Christian minister, wrote, “Jesus reminds us that the good life combines toughness of the serpent and the tenderness of the dove.

To have serpent-like qualities devoid of dovelike qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish. To have dovelike without serpent like qualities is to be sentimental, anemic, and aimless. We must combine strongly marked antithesis.” (Matthew 10:16) I was in my youth in the 1960’s, and like many others growing up in this period of our nation’s history I clearly remember and testify that Martin Luther King Jr. truly embodied tough-mindedness, determination, persistence, and compassion. Indeed, King admonished his own who were either too dovelike or too serpent-like. He criticized those who passively allowed the status quo to continue and who accepted what he knew was an unjust system, thus “cooperating and participating in its evil.” He strongly criticized those “hard hearted and bitter individuals” among his own who resorted to physical violence and corroding hatred.” I distinctly remember the latter individuals detracting from the movement, in contrast to the non-violent, tough-minded, and compassionate leadership of King.

Who can forget King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” given on the Washington Mall in front of the Lincoln Memorial August 28, 1963 (on my sister Anne’s birthday and at the beginning of my first year of college, age 17, in Atlanta, Georgia). The part of his speech that struck me most:

…I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.…I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.…

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream…I have a dream that one day in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers….

And so it has become…fifty-three years later. Yes, there is still racism in the United States and in the world at large, but we have come a long way in the last half century. Let us remember on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, January 16, 2017, and not forget the timeless successful reality that Martin Luther King Jr. embodied and experienced and that Compassionate DFW fosters for true justice and peace: tough-minded compassion and love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration. Let us be eternally grateful for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life and for the source of his life and strength. Amen.

C.O. Barker MD