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1/2 Being at Arlington's 50th annual tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King led me to think about how the phrase most applied to him is "civil rights leader." He was certainly that but an equally apt phrase is "American founder," no less than, say, Jefferson. By that I mean this: 
2/x In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. King described his vision of the intersection between the struggle for Black liberation and equality and the founding creed of the United States as follows:
3/x In writing that "the goal of America is freedom," Dr. King asked us to consider the distance we had (and have) to travel between the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, the 1787 Constitution, the Reconstruction Amendments, and American Life. As James Baldwin puts it:
4/x And, while it is true that much more work remains undone, it is equally true that he fundamentally changed American society and, in a way, he re-founded our country. That's why one of my favorite passages is his description of what he called the beloved community:
5/x So, on this weekend, when we celebrate his life and his legacy, I'll remember Dr.King as a family man:
6/x As a fearless leader:
8/x As a human being who left this life much too soon:
9/x And not least of all, I'll remember him as a poet as he was here in the last 2 minutes of the last speech he ever gave the night before his assassination:
10/10 In remembrance of Dr. King: the work for the more perfect union and the beloved community continues.
