Martin Luther King Jr.  was a hero of mine.   I admired his standing up for justice and his insistence that resistance must be non-violent.  Speaking with moral authority,  he inspired me with both his words and his actions.   

King’s dream of people being judged by the “content of their character” instead of the “color of their skin” remains unfinished.   Yet, his words live on, challenging us in a new era.    These words,  from a sermon at Dexter Ave Baptist Church, reflect his courage and the courage of those who committed to a way of non-violent change.

“To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.’ ”
—  From MLK’s sermon “Loving Your Enemies,” delivered on November 17, 1957, at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama

“Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low . . .  and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain…” Isaiah 40:4-5