By Staff
The same faces can be seen attending events on Dr. Martin Luther King's Day. For King's dream to be fully realized, the faces need to be more than one color.
Year after year, African American parents bring their children to churches to learn about King and his wish for his people.
At Monday's annual King breakfast in Cassopolis at the United Methodist Church, ministers offered prayers after searching King's words for inspiration. Children's choirs sang and dance and good food was enjoyed.
The message – King's dream – is passed down from generation to generation with the hope youngsters will see the world a better place – a more equal place – than experienced by their grandparents and great-grandparents.
Change, though, won't come about by only one group – a minority group at that – passing down these beliefs in the equality of all people, no matter what their color or race.
As the Rev. Christopher Pittman of the Peoples Church in Cassopolis put it so well, "we are all members of one race – the human race."
When life saving blood drips through an IV into a crash victim's vein, is it brown or white?
Parents of all races need to talk to their children and encourage them to see the world, not as black and white, but as yellow, brown and pink.
What Martin Luther King looked for more than 40 years ago will still remain just a dream if all people don't join in to end the segregation in the minds of our next generation.
There must be more than blacks being "allowed" to sit at the same lunch counter, or to no longer be at the back of a bus.
Martin Luther King Day needs to become more than a day off of school without mail delivery. It needs to be a day of education, whether at the neighborhood church or at home.