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I recently crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, just days ago during my Walk Across America, and I felt the full weight of its history. That bridge, stained with the blood of civil rights foot soldiers, stands as a testament to the unyielding courage of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and those who fought alongside him for dignity, equality and justice. Now, as Martin Luther King Jr. Day arrives, I find myself pondering a haunting question: What would Dr. King think if he could see Chicago’s South Side today?
The South Side is not a relic of the past. It is a present-day living crisis. Gunfire echoes through neighborhoods where children should be playing in the streets. Poverty is visible everywhere — in littered streets, broken windows and abandoned buildings. Schools pass on failing kids. Families are torn apart not by white supremacy, but by the poison of neglect, fatherlessness and a culture that embraces dependency over free will.
Dr. King dreamed of a beloved community where character, not color, defined us. He spoke often of the Promised Land, and those words defined his final speech before he was assassinated. He marched for opportunity, not handouts. He spent a lot of time in Chicago during the 1960s.
WALKING ACROSS AMERICA SHOWED ME WHY FAITH AND FREE THOUGHT CAN STILL WIN
But if he walked these streets now, I believe he would weep — not only at the violence and deprivation, but at how we have squandered his legacy. He would see a Black Lives Matter movement that exploded onto the scene in 2020 and reaped billions of dollars in donations — what one of its founders brazenly called “white guilt money.” Corporations and celebrities poured in fortunes, virtue-signaling their way to absolution.
Yet where did that money go? Not to the South Side’s crumbling schools or job-training programs. Not to mentoring programs for at-risk youth or safe havens from the streets. Instead, it lined the pockets of a few — funding mansions in upscale neighborhoods — while the Black underclass continues to tread at the bottom.
I know this firsthand. As a pastor who has dedicated his life to uplifting his community through Project H.O.O.D. — Helping Others Obtain Destiny — I have seen zero dollars from those windfalls. We are in the process of building our Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center, the first new building in my neighborhood in more than 50 years. We provide job training and fight daily battles against despair — without a dime from the grievance industry.
That’s what it is, folks: an industry. A machine that profits off pain, peddling slogans and outrage while ignoring real solutions — solutions that are often simple but require hard work and perseverance. Dr. King didn’t march for performative activism or luxury homes bought on the backs of the suffering. He marched for self-reliance, family, faith and the American promise that hard work could lift anyone.
So what would King say about this? He would call it a betrayal. He would remind us that true progress is measured in transformed lives. He would decry the lowered expectations imposed on Black communities — the insidious notion that we are perpetual victims, excused from accountability.
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No, Dr. King didn’t die so that America could lower its expectations of Black communities. He died so we could rise to the highest expectations — the same standards to which all Americans are held.
The South Side doesn’t need another slogan or more empty politics. It needs one thing above all else: development. It needs the development of its youth into strong citizens with the ability to seize opportunity. It needs development that teaches people how to live and thrive in freedom.
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Most of all, it needs the restoration of good faith to reverse more than 60 years of bad faith that has destroyed too many communities.
Martin Luther King Jr. may be long gone, but his vision of the Promised Land — a land of opportunity for all — remains within reach. We must seek it or perish.
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