Martin Luther King, Jr.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. -- (Senate - January 17, 2007)

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a great man who inspired ordinary African Americans to demand equal rights as American citizens. This year, we celebrate what would have been Dr. King's 78th birthday and his dream for equality and justice for all that remains our Nation's moral compass.

In honoring Dr. King on this particular anniversary of his birth, we remember that it has been a year since we lost his wife and indispensable partner, Coretta Scott King, who died on January 30, 2006. Mrs. King was a woman of quiet courage and great dignity who marched alongside her husband and became an international advocate for peace and human rights. She had been actively engaged in the civil rights movement as a politically and socially conscious young woman and continued after her husband's death to lead the country toward greater justice and equality for all, traveling the world on behalf of racial and economic justice, peace and nonviolence, women's and children's rights, gay rights, religious freedom, full employment, health care, and education.

Much has improved since 1966, when Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ralph Abernathy organized marches and protests in Chicago. Today, 80 percent of African Americans older than 25 have earned their high school diploma, and there are 2.3 million African American college students, an increase of 1 million from 15 years ago. In addition, there are 1.2 million African-American businesses across the country that generate $88.6 billion in revenues.

This important day calls us to recognize the challenges that remain and the work that still must be done to move closer to Dr. King's dream. If he were alive today, Dr. King would undoubtedly be dismayed by injustices large and small, including the violence in Iraq, the deepening divide between those who have and those who do not, and the prohibitive cost of higher education, which is now out of reach for many African-American and Hispanic families. In the wealthiest Nation on Earth, 37 million people live in poverty, 47 million people do not have health insurance, and millions more are underinsured.

Our Nation is a better one thanks to Dr. King and the sacrifices he and others made during the 1950s and 1960s. I remembered that as I walked in some of those same footsteps when I joined U.S. Representative JOHN LEWIS' pilgrimage to Selma and Montgomery, Alabama. Although there is much of Dr. King's dream that remains to be fulfilled, I have faith that we will continue to move toward the equality and justice that he sought. As a nation, we must and we shall.

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