Some may see this upcoming holiday as simply a day off when the news replays his famous "I Have a Dream" speech to the point of nausea.,”Martin Luther King Jr. Day is almost upon us. We are all given the day off next Monday as a time to reflect on the dream of Dr. King.

Some may see this upcoming holiday as simply a day off when the news replays his famous "I Have a Dream" speech to the point of nausea.

Truly, the importance of this day is lost in the glorification of King as a man who wanted to integrate society. However, we do not look at King past 1963. We look at a person referenced to for the holiday by keeping with that identity and not looking past the characteristics and actions that are well known about King.

The message of the King holiday is one from one of his famous speeches, which spoke of integrating whites and blacks in a harmonious message. We never get to see the radical King that came after 1965. King was resounding the success of Lyndon Johnson's signing of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.

This victory over segregationists gave King momentum in pushing his national message of goodwill, but the summer of 1965 changed all that. The Watts section of California went up in flames as black residents protested the economic conditions and their treatment by the police.

King tried to take his message up to Chicago in the slums there and he was greeted with more viciousness then he ever received in the South. This is when the last years of King's life are conveniently ignored.

The place of King within the historical landscape glosses over the period after 1965 and ends with his death.

King began speaking more about the excesses of capitalism and the serious unequal distribution of wealth in this country. The popularity that King shared with white moderates evaporated after this. They were unwilling to take the next step in reshaping the country.

The last vestiges of mainstream support had left when he opposed the war in Vietnam. King's opposition speech was so eloquent that if you replaced the words Vietnam with Iraq it could have been written today and delivered the same level of significance.

This vestige of King who wanted militant escalated non-violence to oppose the war in Vietnam and to bring about a new March on Washington for poor people made him a pariah to mainstream Americans.

The more radical King is not given mention because America is afraid of letting you see a man who was not just visionary of masked inclusion. They are afraid to show a man angered by the violence and greed of American society. King wanted there to be real integration, which included equal access to public facilities and wealth.

This King was the bridge between the militancy of the burgeoning in urban black communities and his Christian teachings of loving your enemy and bringing peace to those who hate.

The real King message escapes historians because it rocks the foundation that where the few who are wealthy control the majority of assets. It rocks a foundation where wars are started by arrogance and greed instead of an earnest fight for freedom.

Members of this university need to use this day as an opportunity to make the dream of Dr. King an actuality. It can be a day to highlight all the nameless members who sacrificed along with King and the sacrifice that is needed to produce real change in this country.

The most important thing we can take from this day is that great rewards in life cannot come about without great forfeiture of privilege.

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