Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Each year we return to familiar words, familiar images, familiar struggles. Our children and grandchildren learn of Dr. King’s immeasurable contributions to our country, and of his courage and eloquence.
That’s as it should be. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is one of the greatest orations in world history, and an abiding touchstone for our nation. And while there has been an ugly revival of anti-King sentiment in the sewers of the far right, an overwhelming percentage of Americans—around 80 percent—tell pollsters that he made our country better.
But for me, this year, it is it is King’s last speech that resonates most deeply.
On the night before he was killed, in Memphis, King spoke not only about race, but about democracy. He spoke about sanitation workers striking for dignity and decent wages, about economic power, and about the right and responsibility of people to protest injustice. He reminded his audience that throughout history, progress has never been handed down by those in power, it has been demanded—peacefully, persistently—by ordinary citizens acting together. We, the people, make justice real; the powerful resist.
King lived that truth, For him protest itself was a moral act. The segregationists called him a “troublemaker” and accused him of fomenting “disorder.” But King understood that non-violent resistance is not disorder. It is a higher form of order. It can rise to become a kind of justice, the means by which people without power force a nation to look at what it is doing in their name.
The long and continuing struggle for justice for all Americans has made us a better country. Nikkole-Hannah Jones, author of The 1619 Project, put it beautifully:
“Black Americans have been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom. More than any other group in this country’s history, we have served, generation after generation, in an overlooked but vital role: It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy.”
This matters today. Across the country, Americans are protesting the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown—challenging raids, detentions, and policies they believe are cruel, unlawful, or both. These are Americans in their own neighborhoods, observing what government officials are doing there, and speaking out against it. And they are doing so on behalf of the immigrants and refugees in their neighborhoods, in solidarity with the powerless and despised. Whatever one’s politics, the act of protest itself stands squarely in King’s tradition.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy is not confined to the unfinished work of racial justice, essential as that remains. It also lives in his faith that democracy survives only when people are willing to stand up, speak out, and insist that power answer to conscience.
On this day, we honor him best not by silence or ceremony, but by remembering that protest is not a threat to democracy. It is one of its deepest expressions.
So let us listen again to that immortal voice, in the last speech he gave, reminding us of that truth.
—Terry