Martin Luther King Day

MLK Ritual Blog.
We will be ‘celebrating’ Martin Luther King Day. It is a relatively new holiday in our calendar, and becoming a ritual like other special days that we recognize as a community. What kind of ritual holiday is it, what does it say about our culture?
Like many holidays this day has a seasonal component. It is the a winter holiday coming a couple weeks after New Years, as Christmas and New Years are the main winter holidays and Easter is the spring holiday . It is something more though and says something very important about our cultural values. This holiday recognizes an important persons birthday, and in so doing his efforts to change our society. It recognizes a significant individual, but it also says that there are certain important values in our society, equality and justice for all people, of every race and ethnicity.
Wasn’t this something that has always been a part of American Culture? Yes and no! It was written into the Constitution but was applicable in practice. It took many years of political fighting, a war and still many years of fighting, and we are still working at it.
This is a new holiday and rituals are still developing, but they are there. The media will run stories about Dr. King’s great speeches and efforts to bring racial equality to everyone. In Columbus there is a community breakfast at the convention center that features speakers familiar with Dr. King’s work and at the end of the day there is a March from the Veterans Memorial across the Scioto River to City Hall. This ritual is particularly interesting since public Marches were an important tool that was used to help protest racial inequality in communities around the country. We are recreating and participating in an event that Dr. King would have been a part of. We become one with him through these marches.