When I set up my essay on the little black dress (LBD) to run on Tuesday, it was because I have a series of essays about color that I planned to post on successive Tuesdays. I am releasing them in order, and it was that essay’s turn. It was posted automatically this morning with me doing a thing.

Not only will we have to repent for the sins of bad people; but we also will have to repent for the appalling silence of good people.
—Martin Luther King Jr.

Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of the death of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. so I have been thinking about him all day. I am old enough to remember.

I used to do an activity or talk each year about three men. I held a globe in my hands and spun it as I talked about different places. I began with a New Englander, an American who refused to pay taxes that contributed to an unjust system and was jailed. He argued that by doing this, he harmed no one but himself and thus was not forced to act outside his morality. He called his actions Civil Disobedience.

On the other side of the world and decades later, a young lawyer fresh out of university in England tried boarding a train in South Africa and was told he was not allowed in First Class. Then that man went home to India and found that there, too, he was a second class citizen. Like the New Englander, his personal values would not allow a violent response. He chose another way. Sometimes he stood on train tracks and refused to move. In prison, he refused to eat. He called his actions Satyagraha, nonviolent protest.

Return again to the American South a few decades later, and here a young minister looked for a way to force change without sacrificing his soul in the process. He sat at lunch counters and ordered coffee. He marched in the street and sang. He called his actions nonviolent resistance.

Thoreau and Ghandi and King were inspired, each one, by the actions of others before them. Each one made change happen. Each one followed and then led in turn. It was not only men. Sojourner Truth, Josephine Hull, Fannie Lou Hamer, and many others created a path, stepping before those behind them, and lighting the way ahead.

Be inspired.