Happy Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Today, as we celebrate what would have been the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 94th birthday, I reflect on the impact his legacy has had on my life.

The gift of oratory was Dr. King’s superpower. His sermons, speeches, and papers have inspired generations of people from diverse backgrounds, including my family.

When my father taught my sister and me to read, he often referenced Dr. King’s writings. Dr. King’s words buoyed my father’s spirit, helping him forge forward in his struggle for a better life, and he wanted to pass that on to us.

Dr. King said, “If the Negro is to be free, he must move down into the inner resources of his own soul and sign with a pen and ink of self-assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation.”*?This call to look within stayed with my father.

Before teaching us to read, my father taught himself, and he did so during the five years he spent imprisoned in a Chinese labor camp--an ordeal both my parents experienced. During this time, they turned inward to their Christian beliefs, values, and motivations. Though their bodies were imprisoned, they understood their minds to be free.

They held on to Dr. King’s words that to be free, one must first dig down within himself and claim that freedom for himself. They instilled this process of self-discovery and self-awareness in my sister and me at a very young age, enabling us to break away from external constraints and limitations threatening to hold us back.

It took my parents over ten years to get the family out of China. They persisted because the U.S. represented, for them, freedom. Dr. King’s legacy reminds us that to claim that freedom outwardly, we must first believe it is ours inwardly.

Today, I ask you to honor Dr. King by looking within yourself and choosing to “believe in yourself and believe that you are somebody.”

* Listen to Dr. King's speech,?here.