The “holidays” are over. Whew, how did that happen? It sure went fast. Yet it sure went slow. You know how time does that … it just drags until it decides to march -  march all over your New Year’s resolutions, your face, your yard, your bank account, your kids’ faces. You know you can’t stop time … but worry not. This is not about New Year’s resolutions or time. That I resolve. This time.

But it is a column on Martin Luther King, Jr. The next public holiday rolling around in the good ol’ US of A. Next Monday, Jan.15 to be exact, gives most state-employed folks and school kids the day off.  A three-day weekend is a most awesome thing, and I truly hope Americans take time to ponder and appreciate this man, and maybe some of his courageous contemporaries.

There are many things I admire about MLK. For starters, an unassuming Southern Black man from Georgia, he was the well-educated son of a preacher and became a preacher himself. He did not grow up in economically trying circumstances as such, but he did grow up in the Jim Crow South in Atlanta. An eloquent Baptist preacher, he had no idea when he took over the church in Montgomery, Ala., the world was getting ready to change. And he was going to be holding the reins.

He didn’t come up with non-violence as a way to fight injustice, but he sure did know how to execute it. He improved upon the practice of non-violence. Indian leader Gandhi eventually beat the British government with the practice. Gandhi borrowed the idea himself from the American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. An essay called “The Art of Civil Disobedience” written in 1849, was an argument in favor of peaceful disobedience against an unjust state. It all comes full circle. Back to America.

Everyone knows, if they want to know, MLK was assassinated right here in Tennessee 55 years ago. The day was April 4, 1968 on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis. This was a most tragic death in an era when America couldn’t seem to get enough of violently murdering its brightest and best lights. You know, the kind that inspire people. No less than five civil rights leaders were killed in a span of five years for their beliefs and potential to change the status quo. The Kennedys, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, the kind of leaders who send shivers of fear up some people’s backs because they might bring power to the disempowered people.

MLK and Malcolm X are two characters in American history that bookend the civil rights era of the 1960s. When I was a teenager, posters of both leaders festooned my walls along with The Beatles, Jim Morrison, and Pretenders. Later, I taught my son and my students how both men worked fearlessly, though perhaps in different fashions, for the same end. The opposition they faced and the passion they embodied fired me up and still does today.

Give a moment of your time and attention to the late, great MLK Jan. 15. Revolve to do it. Take your time. This one time.

Standard reporter JL Jacobs can be contacted at jjacobs@southernstandard.com