Dr. King believed democracy was not a state, but an act and we must all do our part.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was fond of saying, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It has been a bumpy but steady path toward true civil rights for all in America. Little by little, this nation has chipped away at the vestiges of slavery, when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and Congress passed the Civil War Amendments ending slavery in 1865, defining citizenship as anyone born in the United States (1868), and giving Black males the right to vote (1870).

The struggle for equality by African Americans

Following a brief period of Reconstruction, vigilante groups and lynch mobs sprang up throughout the South, determined to return to their antebellum ways. This new system of white domination denied Black people the political and social rights they only recently had begun to enjoy. In 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court upheld the doctrine of separate but equal that ushered in “Jim Crow” laws and a caste system of racial apartheid. Black people were reduced to second-class citizens in all facets of American life for the first half of the 20th century.

The struggle for equality by African Americans gained renewed momentum after World War II. In 1954, the Supreme Court issued the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision, which declared segregated public schools inherently unequal. By the 1960s, African Americans and their white allies took to the streets with a crusade of nonviolent civil disobedience which included protests, marches, sit-ins at lunch counters and a campaign of gaining the right to vote.

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of 250,000 white and Black Americans and delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. In that speech, King called on all Americans to live up to the American creed enunciated at its founding that “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” Within five years, Congress had passed three landmark pieces of civil rights legislation. Between 1964 and 1968, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act into law, banning segregation in all public facilities and prohibiting discrimination in employment; the Voting Rights Act, mandating that no Americans could be denied access to the ballot box; and in 1968, after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Fair Housing Act, which outlawed discrimination in housing.

During King’s lifetime, he was regularly spied on by the F.B.I., constantly threatened, continuously arrested and ultimately murdered for the cause of freedom and justice for all.

Today, our democracy is under threat

In any true democracy, a defining characteristic is an independent media. As president and since leaving office, Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked the legitimacy of the media by referring to it as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.” He has shown us by his actions and rhetoric that our constitutional republic – Dr. King’s dream – is at risk. After losing the 2020 presidential election, Trump not only refused to concede to Joe Biden, he has since flouted many of our democratic norms.

Before the death of Civil Rights activist and Congressman John Lewis in 2020, he wrote an opinion piece to the New York Times titled “Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation.” In it, he reflects on the death of Emmett Till and how it affected his early life. Lewis stated that “fear constrained us like an imaginary prison” when referencing the anxiety brought on by fellow African Americans being killed because of their skin color. To find a way out, Lewis listened to Dr. Martin Luther King’s speeches on the radio advocating for nonviolence. King believed each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. According to King, democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community – a nation and world society at peace with itself. We ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of our nation.

Dewey M. Clayton, Ph.D. is a professor of political science at the University of Louisville

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Martin Luther King Jr: Our democracy, beloved community is at stake.