I remember the moment as if it were etched into the fabric of time itself—a seven-year-old boy in Albany, Georgia, wandering the aisles of the Woolworth store, my small hand wrapped in my mother’s. The air was thick with the scent of fresh popcorn and waxed linoleum, but beyond the doors, something greater stirred. A song, not just melody but movement, rose like an anthem on the wind: We shall overcome.

Curiosity pulled me toward the doorway, my feet crossing the threshold between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Outside, a sea of voices lifted together, not in anger, but in something deeper—conviction, hope, an unshakable certainty that justice was not a relic of the past but a birthright yet to be claimed.

At first, I felt the flutter of fear. The crowd moved with solemn purpose, yet their faces were not fierce. There was no violence in their eyes, only determination and something I would later understand as the quiet fire of righteousness. Then, as if summoned by my own uncertainty, my mother appeared beside me, her presence a sanctuary.

“They’re trying to make us aware,” she said, her voice steady yet tinged with something that felt like reverence. “Too often, people forget how to treat one another with kindness, with dignity. But these people, they are reminding us of what is right.”

It was 1963, the deep South, a place where shadows of the past clung stubbornly to the present. My mother, the wife of a minister, carried a mind ahead of its time, a heart unafraid to see the truth. She knelt to meet my eyes, searching for a way to shape something so immense into words a child could carry.

“They want us to follow the best of who we are,” she whispered, “to remember that justice is not just for some, but for all. That our forefathers did not bleed and die for half a nation to be free.”

Then I saw him.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

He did not walk; he moved, as if history itself bent its ear to his footsteps. The crowd parted around him like a river giving way to a great ship. Even as a boy, I could see it—he glowed. Not with light, not with anything the eye could explain, but with something far greater. His presence radiated a force I could not name, but I felt it settle deep in my soul, a seed planted in the soil of my memory, destined to grow.

And so it did.

So much of my life has been shaped—like clay upon the Potter’s wheel—by the echoes of that day. It was then that the seed of a question was planted deep in my soul: What is right? Not merely what is convenient, nor what secures my own future, but what righteousness demands when self-preservation tempts me to turn away. It is the eternal tension—the call to build, to prosper, to chart a path forward, yet never at the cost of my brother’s dignity, never in neglect of what Jesus Himself would have done.

For Christ did not walk among men untouched by their burdens. His hands bore the dust of the poor, the weight of the suffering, the blood of those cast aside. And if I claim to follow Him, how can my hands remain clean? No, to live in His way is to speak truth to power, to unsettle the comfortable, to lift the lowly—even when it costs something, even when the world resists.

This day, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, stands as a monument not just to a man, but to a movement—a prophetic call that shook the conscience of a nation. At first, I wondered if his greatness stood shoulder to shoulder with Washington’s or Lincoln’s. But now, I see. His legacy is not merely carved into the annals of history; it is the apex of the American Dream itself.

A humble preacher from Atlanta—no crown, no sword, no earthly throne—stood upon the foundation of love and dared to believe that justice could roll down like waters, that righteousness could flood the valleys of despair. With courage that defied kings and principalities, he spoke, and a nation’s heart was stirred, its mind awakened, its soul—slowly, painfully—redeemed.

And though he has passed beyond the veil, his voice still calls to those who would listen: Will you love when hate is easier? Will you rise when the world says stay down? Will you fight, not with fists, but with faith?

This day is not a relic. It is a fire that still burns.