“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” -MLK, Letter from Birmingham City Jail, 1963

Here's a great article from the Huffington Post about MLK Day 2011.

One of the awesome things about my college is that MLK Day is never just another day of class or a day off work. There is always a series of student-led workshops and discussions focusing on themes of race, power and privilege as well as other programs for the campus community. The workshops look really interesting this year, and I'm sad I missed them!

My understanding of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement was tempered by growing up in Birmingham, AL. Usually, that's the first thing people ask me about when I tell them where I'm from (and then they ask if we wear shoes down here). I've lost count of how many times I visited The Civil Rights Institute and 16th Street Baptist Church. I've been fortunate to have a hands-on education about the Civil Rights Movement and the inspiring people like MLK who fought for their rights. I want to learn more about any relationship between the ideas of MLK and Nelson Mandela. To what degree did they influence each other?

I'm often struck by the fact that segregation in the United States was not that long ago. My parents were kids then, watching protests on the news. I went to high school with people whose parents had been sprayed with water hoses on the streets of Birmingham. Though racism has significantly decreased with my generation, it is still present, and not just in the South. We are a nation that is still healing from the inequality of our past and dealing with many other forms of prejudice, especially in regard to poverty, immigration, Islam, and sexual orientation. We’ve got a long way to go before we’re truly “the land of the free.”

So, what does this have to do with South Africa? Everything. Apartheid held on much longer than segregation, and South Africa is still taking those initial steps toward healing this radical racial divide. I'm really excited to compare and contrast Birmingham and Cape Town, and maybe even see what the two cities can learn from one another.