Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today is the annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. Three out of every four years on this day, I take a half day off work to watch the Washington Wizards play basketball on a Monday afternoon at the Verizon Center. It has become one of my favorite days of the year ever since I realized there was a home game almost yearly on the holiday. I love leaving work early; grabbing a beer with lunch while everyone around me drinks soda or water or whatever else it is that doesn't have alcohol in it; and spending time watching the Wizards play a matinee. I can't wait until noon.

The Wizards have been remarkably successful on MLK day. They have actually won seven of their last eight home games on the third Monday in January dating back to 2003. The only loss in that span was against the Houston Rockets in 2012. That's one of only two home losses on this day since I have been a season ticket holder. If only every game day were that successful. And if you are wondering about the three out of every four years thing, the fourth year is the presidential inauguration, so the Wizards get sent out of town that day.

The NBA schedules matinee games on the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday deliberately to remind us of Dr. King's importance to the history of our country. It was Dr. King who was the most visible face of the Civil Rights Movement that sought to end racial segregation and discrimination against black Americans. The NBA makes an effort to make sure that the games today are most always scheduled in cities which have some significance on this day: Washington, New York, Oakland, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Memphis. Memphis of course is the most poignant, being home to the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King was assassinated in 1968.

Of course, this day is not really about the NBA at all; it just happens to have a bunch of ballgames played on it and the league and the players do their part to remind us of the importance of this day. It is truly astonishing to think that a little more than 50 years ago black citizens of this country were not allowed to ride the same buses, sit at the same lunch counters or drink from the same water fountains as white Americans. It boggles the mind. If Dr. King and his contemporaries hadn't changed the way the United States thinks about racial equality, our country might be substantially similar to the way it was before 1955, which is generally acknowledged as the start of the Civil Rights Movement. Chilling.

2014 is the first year that NBA basketball will be played on the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday since I started this blog and I think it's appropriate to spend some time on a post that has something to do with Dr. King. So last weekend, I made my first trip to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall to spend a few minutes remembering what Dr. King contributed to change the face of our nation.

Geographically, the Memorial is in West Potomac Park along Independence Avenue, situated about halfway between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials on the Tidal Basin facing the Jefferson. In relation to other memorials that dot the National Mall, it sits a bit north of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and immediately south of the D.C. War Memorial. It's not exactly in a part of the Mall which gets a ton of foot traffic and since it was a bit chilly last Sunday morning, I chose to drive, finding parking just across from the Memorial's south entrance.

The concept of the Memorial is based on one of Dr. King's quotes from 1963, which reads:

"This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the south with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope."

The Memorial is a very literal manifestation of that quote, with a white granite Stone of Hope removed some forty feet or so southeast of a Mountain of Despair. The two shapes I suppose could fit together if you picked the Stone of Hope and dropped it between the two halves of the Mountain of Despair. Dr. King's stoic and resolute likeness emerges from the front side of the Stone of Hope looking east toward the Jefferson Memorial, arms folded with a scroll of paper in his left hand. Arrayed to either side of the Mountain of Despair are curved buffed grey granite walls which taper to the ground as they leave the center of the Memorial. The walls each feature inscriptions of Dr. King's quotes with the year and location of the quote, if applicable.

Overall, I think the Memorial provides an appropriate remembrance for someone who led a movement to eradicate the stain of racial segregation from the American consciousness. It's in an important spot on the mall and while perhaps not the most imaginative of memorials (we seem to be stuck in a bit of a rut in D.C. when it comes to memorial design), it is well executed and goes a long way to memorializing something we should not soon forget. I am not suggesting by writing this that we are all the way to racial harmony or even tolerance in this country, but we are a heck of a lot closer than we were 50 years ago.

The Memorial is filled with sometimes obvious symbolism beyond the quote on which it is based. According to the National Park Service's website, the detachment of the Stone of Hope from the Mountain of Despair symbolizes victory borne from disappointment. The Stone of Hope also represents the steadfast resolve of an entire generation to achieve a fair and honest society. This last point may be a bit of stretch. If an entire generation believed in the Civil Rights Movement from the beginning, change might have come more quickly.

One of the intents of the siting and design of the Memorial was to allow the Jefferson Memorial to be seen from behind the Mountain of Despair to establish a connection with Jefferson to reflect the principles of freedom and liberty which founded the nation. No doubt Thomas Jefferson did something extraordinary through his participation in establishing the principles behind our government but I do find it ironic that Jefferson himself was a slave owner and he wasn't really considering ALL of mankind when he wrote "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence. I do like to hope that Jefferson would have supported the Civil Rights Movement in what was undoubtedly a more enlightened time than the 1770s.

At 2 p.m. today, I'll be sitting in my lower level seats in Verizon Center waiting for the Wizards to pound the Philadelphia 76ers into submission. I have never in my life been a victim of racial discrimination. Why would I have, really? I have been in the racial majority in both countries that I have lived in. As such I really have no concept of what life in a segregated society is like, especially being part of the minority that is forcibly segregated. But for my part, I hope I try every day to understand the work that has been done and the work that is still left to be done to break down racial barriers. If nothing else, the issue is front and center in my thoughts on this day. Go Wizards!