BECKLEY — “Freedom is not free; someone pays the price for everything, and this man paid the ultimate price,” Pastor Thomas Steelman reminded the crowd gathered Sunday at Beckley’s Outreach for Christ Christian Center to honor the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and to celebrate the man, the struggle and the dream.

In 2011, King would have been 82 years old had his life not been cut short April 4, 1968. Although King was only on this earth for 39 years, in the words of Steelman, he “never gave up the good fight and kept moving forward.”

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan honored King by declaring his birthday a national holiday. Now, every year the Raleigh County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has a celebration to remember King and his efforts to end segregation and discrimination.

Mayor Emmett Pugh greeted the crowd by saying, “We are here to commemorate the birthday of Dr. King and give him a tribute of an outstanding American. But more than honoring the man in calling attention to what he lived for, fought for and ultimately died for, King brought to life, in our time, the principles of our revolutionary forefathers: equality, freedom and opportunity for all.

“His abilities to lead, to speak and to move the hearts, minds and consciousness of people everywhere brought new hope and meaning to the words of our Pledge of Allegiance, ‘liberty and justice for all,’” Pugh said.

In 1944, King graduated from high school and was admitted to Morehouse College at the age of 15. After graduation, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary, where he was ordained to the Baptist ministry in 1948 at the age of 19.           In 1951, King entered Boston University where he would earn his Ph.D. in philosophy in systematic theology, making him Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

According to the book “Martin Luther King, Jr. His Life and Dream,” after the Civil War, slaves were given their freedom but did not enjoy the same rights as white people and southern lawmakers passed many laws to keep whites and blacks apart.

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that blacks and whites could go to the same schools; however, many Americans opposed this new way of thinking and living. The book states it would take a strong leader, a person who believed in peace and justice, to win equality for black Americans.  King was that man.

Between 1955 and 1968 King helped change America by bringing unfair treatment to the country’s attention. He joined the bus boycott in 1955 after Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat. King was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, making him the spokesman for the boycott.

After the bus boycott continued for 382 days, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was illegal in 1956.

During the 1950s and 1960s, as King continued to fight, a number of important civil rights activities occurred that helped position the civil rights movement for greater recognition. Through King’s leadership and example, he led peaceful demonstrations and marches to protest discrimination.

Many of his ideas on nonviolence were fashioned on the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi in India, where King visited in 1959 to study Gandhi’s philosophies.

In 1963, King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech and in 1964, he was the youngest person to ever be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 35.

In 1968, King was assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tenn., after marching with sanitation workers who were on strike. Riots and disturbances followed in 13 American cities with 20,000 arrests.

However, within a week of the assassination, Congress passed the Open Housing Act to prohibit discrimination concerning the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion and national origin; later, gender and disabilities were added.

“Dr. King was taken from us by an assassin’s bullet far too soon, but the principles he taught, lived and died for are instilled in each of us and serve as a beacon for us to continue in his large footsteps,” Pugh said. “Dr. King’s efforts to see that each of us gets his or her fair share of the American dream are now our efforts.

“By joining together and sharing the memories and milestones of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life, we can take from here the inspiration to build a better Beckley, a better West Virginia and ultimately a better America,” Pugh added.

“Dr. King led the way. It is up to us to follow.”

— E-mail: kvanpelt@register-herald.com