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All across the USA, we are collectively returning to somewhat of a sense of normalcy following back-to-back major holidays.

And if one wants to add Thanksgiving to the mix, then we’ve celebrated three big holidays over a period of only 35 days.

It’s no wonder that we, upon reporting to work or school this past Monday (for those that did manage to travel if the weather forecast held true to form), had trouble figuring out the exact day and date.

But yet there’s another holiday looming. However, for this one, there’s no need to spend all day in the kitchen fixing a huge meal. There’s no tree to decorate or gifts to wrap / unwrap.

We’re less than two weeks away from celebrating the birthday of one of our nation’s most influential individuals. From the time Martin Luther King Jr. first became a household name in the mid 1950s until an assassin’s bullet claimed his life on April 4, 1968, he was, without a doubt, the major force behind the Civil Rights Movement.

Monday, Jan. 20, will be a day to pay tribute to King – and others – for their long struggle for equality by African Americans.

Dr. King was not the only person waging a peaceful war on tyranny and injustice, but his is the face that first comes to mind when you think of all that was accomplished in the 1950s and ‘60s to gain civil rights for people who were not really freed from the shackles of bondage in the previous century. There is a reason his face and his voice are so deeply rooted in our consciousness as a nation.

It was King – who, by the way, graduated from high school at the age of 15 and received a BA degree from Morehouse College at age 19 – who was chosen to lead a bus boycott that began in December of 1955 and lasted 382 days. Over that period of time, King’s home was bombed and he suffered personal abuse. But yet his efforts were worth it when on Dec. 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals.

During the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, King was arrested nearly 20 times. But he kept moving forward. He was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963. At the age of 35, King became the youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the then burgeoning civil rights movement. Between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over 2,500 times to address injustices.

On one of those occasions, a quarter of a million people were in our nation’s capital on Aug. 28, 1963 for the historic March on Washington – a gathering of people of all races and all backgrounds that is equaled in importance only by a much smaller gathering in Philadelphia more than 200 years earlier for the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the creation of a bold experiment in democracy.

Civil rights and workers’ rights groups gathered in Washington to seek justice for the millions of Americans who were not allowed to live the American dream. These diverse groups were overjoyed that the young man who was getting all the national attention had agreed to be the last to speak that day and to limit his speech to four minutes.

Little did they know that Rev. King was going to deliver an address that would become the “joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.”

His “I have a dream” speech – which lasted for 16 minutes after he discarded his prepared speech – galvanized those diverse groups and people into a force for righteousness and moved a nation to finally free the people who were supposed to have been freed 100 years earlier with the Emancipation Proclamation.

From that moment on, “the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” were an abomination to most Americans – injustices that had to be purged because it was right and just and in keeping with the high ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Dr. King’s speech didn’t change the hearts of every person, but it illuminated the dark recesses of enough hearts and minds and spirits to forever change this nation and finally restore the bright promise of freedom, justice and equality that is America.

There are many great moments in American history, but there are three that have extended the boundaries of freedom and liberty far beyond anything that had come before in any civilization: The Continental Congress adopting the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation; and Dr. King’s “Dream”.

We have yet to realize the true depth of Dr. King’s dream, but we’re getting there. I’ll bet even he would be surprised to see how much things have changed in the 62 years since he so eloquently articulated his dream for America. Maybe one day race really won’t matter. Maybe one day the dream will be fully realized.

Perhaps the “Black Lives Matter” groups will reach people so that the slogan “All Lives Matter” will become a reality in this nation, something that Dr. King believed in.

Dr. King’s speech is beautiful and powerful. If you’ve never heard or read the entire speech, please do so. You can find it on the internet anytime you want. Savor the words for their beauty and listen to the content.

We need his vision for a more perfect union today as much as we needed it over 60 years ago.

Cal Bryant is the Editor of Roanoke-Chowan Publications. Contact him at cal.bryant@r-cnews.com or 252-332-7207.