Rep. John Lewis Commemorates Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday

"In the next few days this nation will celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  This one man liberated, not just a people, but an entire nation from the burdens of separation and division.  Dr. King helped make this world a better place.         

"His message was love.  His weapon was truth.  His method was creative nonviolence.  His goal was the Beloved Community  -- a society based on simple justice that values the dignity and the worth of every human being.  In a sense, he spoke a strange language.  He talked about the philosophy of passive resistance to evil and the use of nonviolence in the struggle for good. He was a radical, far too advanced in his concepts of love and peace for the violent times in which he lived.

"Dr. King may have been cut down by an assassin’s bullet, but his legacy lives on.  Men could conspire to take his life, but they can never kill the truth of his words or the power of his message.  The movement that Martin Luther King, Jr. led, the movement that he sustained, was too right, too necessary, too noble to ever die. 

"This man of vision, this man of peace was never elected to any public office.  But you can find his likeness on the National Mall today standing with generals and presidents.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. must be looked upon as one of the founding fathers of the new America, who injected true meaning into the very veins of our democracy."

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