Hey everyone,
I hope you’re all enjoying this holiday weekend! It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I’ve been thinking a lot about his incredible legacy. A while back, I had the chance to visit the King Center in Atlanta, and it really stayed with me.
Just a couple of blocks away from the main King Center, on a quiet, pretty residential street, sits Dr. King’s childhood home. It’s been beautifully preserved, so you really get a feel for what family life was like back then.
Dr. King used to talk about how, even as a kid, the view from the front stoop shaped him—the poor houses on one side, the wealthy ones on the other. It gave him an early sense that things needed to change.
Like most of us, I grew up watching those classic black-and-white clips of his “I Have a Dream” speech (and yes, I watched it again in my college U.S. History class). I still remember how big a deal it was in 1986 when MLK Day finally became a federal holiday—we even walked down the street as a family to mark the occasion.
The King Center itself is so moving. There’s this serene reflecting pool where Dr. King and Coretta Scott King are laid to rest, and along the sides are powerful quotes from his speeches, including his call to confront the three great evils: racism, poverty, and war.
Most people, when you ask what Dr. King stood for, will immediately say something about judging people “by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.” And that’s absolutely right. But in his later years, he was also passionately speaking out against poverty. He even talked about poor Black folks and poor white folks coming together to fight for better lives.
In his final book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, he wrote something that still hits hard today:
“A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth… Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.”
That was 58 years ago, and yet it feels like he could have written those words yesterday.
So this year, on his birthday, I’ve been thinking: Are we any closer to that “beloved community” he dreamed of? And in our time—with AI changing jobs, economies, and lives so fast—how do we tackle poverty in a way that actually builds something better for everyone?
If you ever get the chance to visit the King Center in Atlanta, do it. It’s powerful, moving, and honestly kind of hopeful all at the same time.
Wishing you all a reflective and peaceful holiday. Love to you and yours.