Dear Dr. King,

Thank you for living your life in a totally radical manner, radically peaceful, radically ardent. Your goals of equality were so rad then, and still so rad, now, when the precarious state of immigration in this country forces suspicion and pushes notions of entitlement to toxic levels.

It's an interesting time to be alive in Boston, where you met your wife and where you studied, and a difficult one in which to bring children, and I suspect you knew something about urbane child-rearing in less favorable neighborhoods. I'm daunted by it all myself, and I try so hard to think about my role as a Christian neighbor, and how that should be radically different from the territorial one that my other neighbors seem to carve out for themselves. But then I think about the legacy you left your children, a legacy of strength, one that overcame fears, one that tried to overcome violence, one that lives on today because of the eloquence of your words and the power of your example. And I'm inspired again to think and act radically. And to pray without ceasing.

Thank you also for being such a radical writer, for writing always, even when you were imprisoned. You wrote on the scraps of newspapers. You used what you had, and I think that is the sign of a great writer: someone who might otherwise literally explode if not for the outlet of writing. I'm hoping that someday my words might amount to something and that by writing myself out of my own mental entrapment (which befalls me from time to time), my words might be liberating to someone else as your words are to me.

I don't have off work today, Dr. King, but I want to be a part of the celebration of your life and your legacy.

Yours in the radical pursuit of equality,
Kendra

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Martin Luther King Jr.,'s apartment in Boston
397 Massachusetts Ave.

Tours with MYTOWN.