Dr. King also learned \u201d\u201d and taught \u201d\u201d the utter futility of being consumed by animus. In a 1963 sermon, he explained: “Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”<\/p>\n
Though clearly on the side of the righteous, he urged magnanimity against those who had persecuted him and his people. As he wrote in his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”: “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.”<\/p>\n
Through his total sacrifice and noble example, Dr. King, despite living less than 40 years, succeeded in his improbable quest to bring out much more of the good in this country. He didn’t just uplift one race. He uplifted the human race.<\/p>\n
And he still does. His message, and his legacy, live on, making us better people, and this a better nation.<\/p>\n