Editor, Gazette-Journal:

The civil rights movement was as controversial as it was radical. It would produce brilliant leaders who would possess a wealth of charisma and appeal…and one would be Martin Luther King, a Baptist minister from Georgia.

Dr. King’s movement would face deep-rooted opposition. A vast portion of the white population as did people of color were not on board with the idea of race mixing. But being born into segregation, blacks feared this untested way of life. To most Americans separation of the races was the natural order of things, or the way it was meant to be.

For Dr. King, challenging an institution as old as segregation would be an uphill battle if not a costly one. There were those who would not endorse civil rights. Instead, they would ignore it.

Like the emptying hour glass, Dr. King’s life was in imminent peril, but he was not naïve to the hate vultures that hovered above. King had made peace with reality, that like in war there is bloodshed a...