U.S. Embassy and Partners Celebrate Civil Rights Leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life and Legacy

Ambassador Wayne and Demetrio Sodi

U.S. Embassy and Partners Celebrate Civil Rights Leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life and Legacy

Mexico City, January 17, 2012 — The U.S. Embassy, along with representatives of the Miguel Hidalgo Delegation, the Government of Mexico City, the American Chamber of Commerce, and local secondary school students, today celebrated and commemorated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and works on the occasion of his birthday celebration, which is a national holiday in the United States. U.S. Ambassador Anthony Wayne was joined by Delegado Demetrio Sodi de la Tijera of Miguel Hidalgo Delegation, Francesca Lacy Ramos Morgan, Director of International Affairs for the Government of Mexico City, and Amy Glover of the American Chamber of Commerce at the event, which took place at the Martin Luther King statue in Polanco’s Lincoln Park.

In his remarks, Ambassador Wayne said, “Dr. King was a common man who did extraordinary things.  He did not have an official government rank, or hold an office that gave him a great authority. But he had something more important.  Dr. King had moral authority.  Through his dedication, his words, and his example, he stirred people in the United States to work to make our country more perfect, closer to the ideals set forth in our constitution.”

In recalling Dr. King’s landmark “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., secondary students from the U.S. Embassy-sponsored Access English Language Scholarship Program in Naucalpan each took turns reciting their dreams for Mexico’s future, doing so in the shadow of Dr. King’s statue—which gazes out at the statue of President Abraham Lincoln, directly opposite, in this important Mexico City green space.  They were joined by secondary students from Mexico City’s Colonia San Simon’s Martin Luther King Junior High School, one of whom spoke eloquently on Dr. King’s legacy.

Ambassador Wayne and the other participants closed the celebration by laying a wreath of flowers at the base of the Dr. Martin Luther King statue in Lincoln Park.

In commemorating Dr. King’s lifelong struggle for equal civil rights for all Americans, Ambassador Wayne called on the students to capitalize on the opportunity to affect change in their own communities and to keep the ideals of Dr. King alive every day.  The Ambassador recalled, “Dr. King was not a man who was larger than life, but instead a common man, whose life tells his story:  you can change the world if you never give up.  When presented the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 39, the youngest recipient, Dr. King accepted it with the “profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time — the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression…If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation.”