A seed planted by a man named Martin.

On April 4, 1968, almost forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. This month, on January 15 1929 he was been born in Atlanta, Georgia, and the country that witnessed his long dedication and arduous path to martyrdom that has become his mark on this earth stops for a few hours to light a candle on the third week to remember him with respect.

I don’t believe I am capable or even authorized to write about the life of this man and reflect about the true measure and dimension of his life. But that is OK. Others have done so with more prose and flavor than me, perhaps with more right as well. But I think I can share a thought or two with my readers about a life that has become a beacon of hope for humanity, a beacon that was extinguished by the hand of a criminal who represented the worst in all of us, but a beacon that continues to shine to this day.

It is easy to reflect on his life and lose the real meaning and reach of what he did. One remembers the tired and angry faces of those who marched with him and may reach the erroneous conclusion that he was fighting a black cause alone. Don’t get me wrong, his immediate goal was to raise the living condition of those who shared his roots and his race, but his train was not meant to stop at that station. His goal was to liberate all of us. I don’t care if our skin is white or brown, if we suffer an injustice he died for us as well.

This month, as we sit and watch the normal political controversies that surround our nation’s electoral primary process, we see a new nation, the 21^st Century America, taking shape in front of us and we have no recourse other than to marvel at the vision that sustained Dr. King on his way to eternity. We now know what maintained his hope: “I have a dream,” he said in Washington on August 28, 1963, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” For the first time in our history we see an African American and a woman vying for the top leadership position in the country and we believe it is possible that they might succeed.

Of course, there are still those who hate and wallow in the mud of prejudice because they have no other reason to express their weak beliefs and confuse tradition with inaction. But those sands of ignorance and misunderstanding are being wiped out by a tsunami like ocean of faith in the American future. And there are many more that are willing to raise their eyes and see now the top of the mountain that became Dr. King’s sole revelation at the time. We don’t know the details of where this newfound hope is going to lead us. We cannot fathom the end of the road in terms of personalities, actually that is irrelevant, but we are absolutely sure that this new paradigm is the harvest from the seed planted by a man named Martin who was not afraid to die for his dream. Death, after all, befalls us all sooner or later; immortality only a few.

And that is my point of view today.

For more information, please visit http://www.LatinoWorldOnline.com