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Congressman John Conyers reminds us that he introduced a bill to honor Dr. King's life with a federal holiday four days after his death.
And that it took until 1983 for it to become a reality - without the help of John McCain, who only today, in the glare of his Republican presidential nomination, felt the need to apologize for being on the wrong side of history for 25 years.
Here in New Hampshire, we had to suffer the resistance of John H. Sununu and Judd Gregg and the humiliation of being the last state in the nation not to recognize MLK day. Until Democrat Jeanne Shaheen erased that shameful distinction.
But we still wait patiently for Republicans to get out of the way on the path to healing our nation from the wounds of slavery and racial injustice.
Forty years after Martin Luther King paid for his work with his life, we are still ruled by those who cannot, or perhaps more accurately, will not, see the way forward.
Like our pair of Republican senators, John E. Sununu and Judd Gregg. Both of whom, along with the tiniest of minorities (including Trent Lott) refused to co-sponsor an anti-lynching resolution, and then cowardly hid behind that act by preventing it from becoming a roll-call vote.
And this, too, will one day be a bad memory.
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