There was yet another man who stood up to fight for freedom. In the sixties, Martin Luther King Jr. bestrode the American landscape like a colossus as he led the Civil Rights Movement which campaigned for the abrogation of laws in the US that relegated the blacks (Negroes) to the status of second class citizens. King was born in Atlanta, Georgia. His father was pastor of a Baptist Church, his mother a school teacher. Originally named Michael, he was renamed Martin when he was about six years old.
He entered Morehouse College in 1944 and there he met Dr. Benjamin Mays, a scholar who encouraged him to enter the ministry. After graduating in 1948, King went to Crozer Religious Seminary to undertake post-graduate study. He received his doctorate in 1955. Returning to the South of the US, he became a pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. King first achieved national renown when he helped mobilize the black boycott of the Montgomery bus system in 1955. The boycott was organized after Rosa Parks, who passed away in 2006 at over 85 years old, a black woman, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, as local custom dictated – in the segregated South, black people were only permitted to sit at the back of the bus. The 382-day boycott led the bus company to change its regulations, and the Supreme Court of the United States declared such segregation unconstitutional.
In 1957, King was active in the organization of the Southern Leadership Christian Conference (SCLC), formed to coordinate civil rights protests against discrimination, and he was elected President. He advocated non-violent direct action modeled on the methods of Mahatma Gandhi, who led the protests against British rule in India that culminated in India’s independence in 1947.
In 1963, King led mass protests against discriminatory practices in Birmingham, Alabama, a city with a dubious reputation because of the violent resistance of its white population to desegregation. The city was dubbed “Bombingham” as attacks against civil rights protesters increased, and King was arrested and jailed for his part in the protests. Upon his release, he participated in the enormous civil rights march in Washington of August 1963.
It was here, at this huge demonstration, that King delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech, where he foresaw a day that the promise of freedom and equality for all would become a reality in America. In 1964, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1965, he led a campaign to register blacks to vote, which culminated in a march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama, the state capital. In 1965, the US Congress passed the Voting Rights Act that outlawed the discriminatory practices that had barred blacks from voting in the South.
As the black movement for civil rights became increasingly radicalized, King found that the message of peaceful protest was not shared by the younger generation, particularly in northern and West Coast cities. King began to protest against American involvement in the Vietnam War and the depth of poverty in the US, as well as black civil rights. However, his crusade on behalf of the poor had only begun when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.
In 1969, his wife, Corretta Scott King, opened the Martin Luther King Jr Center for non-violent Social Change. Despite being investigated and bugged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during his career as a civil rights leader, King is now acknowledged as an American hero, and in 1983, Congress made his birthday, January 15, a national holiday in his honour. He paid the price for freedom for the blacks in the US and became a beacon of hope for all blacks and freedom fighters around the world.
You must pay a price to be free. That is why freedom is not cheap. Those who got political independence on a platter of gold are wont to squander their golden chances. Because they never fought to get it, they take it for granted. Adam and Eve were never children and therefore never grew up through the normal process. They didn’t understand what it meant to have experiences and challenges of growing up, therefore, someone reasoned that was why they took the glory of God they had for granted and then easily disobeyed him! That may not be far from the truth.
Nigeria as a nation never really fought the British to gain political independence. Any wonder then that today, we are still struggling to find our bearing in all spheres of our national life. South Africa is different. They are today very stable and have transited from one government to the other without any incident. Namibia (formerly Rhodesia) fought for independence. I still remember the struggles led by their foremost nationalist leader and later first President, Sam Nujoma and his fellow comrades in SWAPO who fought the Boars to a standstill. In 1990, their courage was saluted as they joined the rest of Africa as an independent nation.
For nearly half a century, South Sudan were in conflict with their Arab northern countrymen. The late John Garang led the South black Sudanese to resist the repression of the Arab north. As I write this chapter, the Republic of South Sudan was born on July 9, 2011 as thousands gathered in the Southern Capital of Juba to receive Africa’s 55th nation. John Garang was not on ground to experience the freedom his fought and died for, his countrymen will never forget his sacrifice for their independence.
When you fight for freedom, you face challenges and these challenges releases your potentials that you thought never existed. You discover you could plan, strategize and the realities of your organizational abilities come into the full glare of the world. In adversity, your best becomes obvious. Therefore, be thankful for every adversity you face in your march towards freedom because if well utilized, they can stand you in good stead to manage your life well.
What are your dreams and aspirations in life? Where do you see yourself headed in life? Those are your visions and they are a part of the freedom your soul longs for. What are you ready to give up to get there? There is going to be a fight and you must fight it. The truth of the matter is this: you will have few choices in the future if you do not make the necessary sacrifices and pay the needed price today. Are you looking forward to financial freedom? What are you doing to increase your streams of income in the nearest future? Do you want to rest and be at peace as a parent in the future seeing your children established and standing firm in their various vocations? Then you must brace up to purposeful parenting. Do you want a virtual queen for a wife? Then you are not going to just look well but be a king in your character and attitude. Besides knowledge and understanding in the issue of marriage, you must prepare yourself from within and be a real man.
I am appalled by the rate of purposelessness in today’s young men. Many young men at 26 – 30 years of age do not have a single clue as to where they are headed in life. Without a purpose, you are a finished person. What are you called to accomplish in life? You are not just here to complete the number of over 6.6 billion people on this planet. You are significant and important. You were crafted for a reason and a cause. Have you located it? Time ticks away every second and every day.
It is very easy to blame the government, institutions and others. But, let me assure you today that what you become is what you make of your life by yourself! What do you think about? Until your thoughts line up to a particular purpose, there will never be any accomplishment in your life. James Allen says “a man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it”. You are supposed to be a creative force. You are supposed to be somebody higher than where you are now; stronger than a bundle of wavering thoughts and fluctuating sensations.
You may just be realizing this enormous potential that lies dormant within you which has not been tapped all the while and may be asking “Please help me!” I have a word for you. A strong man cannot help a weaker unless the weaker one is willing to be helped. You must by your own deliberate and conscious efforts develop the strength which you admire in others. Only you can alter your condition and navigate your way through life for great accomplishments. That is where Barack Obama emerged from as the first Black President of the United States, overcoming personal obstacles and institutional barriers. You too can overcome your challenges and get to the topmost place in your life.
Your way of thinking must change. If you have to become free, you must first of all be free in your mind. Your mind is the clearing house where thoughts (both base and high in nature) fight to take residence. Do you remember the statement that says “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he?” When you look at your life, who do you see? As you stand before a full length mirror, who do you see reflected back to you? Do you see a weak and a discouraged person? Do you see someone worth nothing and who will not amount to anything in life? Is that who you see? If these represent who you see, then you must change your mind-set. You must change your thought patterns.
Do you really love yourself? If you do, then you will fight to be a free man in the real sense of the word. You must have what Reverend Martin Luther King Jr called rationale and healthy self-interest. A great Jewish Rabbi, the late Joshua Leibman, wrote a book some years ago entitled Peace of Mind. In that book, there is a chapter that had a title called “Love Thyself Properly”. What he says in that chapter, in substance, is that before you can love other people adequately, you have to love your own self properly. You do not need to go through life with a deep and haunting emotional conflict. Part of loving yourself very well is accepting yourself and that will set you really free.
Your rationale and healthy self-interest will drive you to focus on something in life and look forward to a period of freedom in your life when you can chose where to live, where to go for holidays with your family without restrictions placed on you for lack of finance and the means. You must not be bound to a shylock of a landlord five to ten years from today. You should be a landlord yourself. You shouldn’t be hopping from one bus or taxi to the other in five years’ time. If you are driving a sloppy, swaging and staggering car now, you should aspire for a sleek car in two to three years from today. That is possible when you set your face like a flint and do the needful to earn enough money to acquire that pleasure toy you seek.
I am not suggesting that material acquisition is the definition of success and freedom but they are legitimate and should be a necessary part of your life for comfort. It should be part of your freedom package but not the ultimate. There are lots of people today who ride in the best of cars and live in mansions but have turmoil in and around their lives. You must understand that your life must have the necessary balance between the spiritual, emotional, physical and material realms. Aspire to be a free person in all ramifications and these do not come cheap. There are things you must do to get that balance. If you keep doing what you have been doing, you will remain where you are. Do you want to get what you’ve never got? Then you must do what you’ve never done. Remember the song in Sister Act:
If you want to go somewhere
If you want to be somebody
You better wake up
And pay attention
