"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." 

—Martin Luther King, Jr. 

"Every year - both on the anniversary of his birth on the 15th of January, and on the anniversary of his assassination on the 4th of April - I send my students a note to commemorate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., a life that made a difference in all our lives.

Dr. King did not live to see his 40th birthday, but he left us a legacy for all seasons. A religious man of modest origins who majored in sociology at Morehouse College and became, perhaps, the greatest orator in American history, he was murdered on April 4, 1968, at the young age of 39 - a brutal, senseless assassination that changed the narrative arc of history in ways we can scarcely imagine.

I remember that fateful date as if it was yesterday: I was a teenager in college, working 30 hours a week while going to school in St. Louis, Missouri, with less than $300 in savings... but that sufficed to buy a plane ticket to Atlanta, Georgia, and make it in time to join the tens of thousands who lined the streets and marched in the funeral procession that followed his mule-drawn casket. I wasn't even a citizen of the United States then, but I was shocked and dismayed by the senselessness of the assassination of a man of peace at a time of war and felt that the only meaningful way in which I could respond was to make an acto de presencia, in silent solidarity. In a way, I have been making that trip of remembrance ever since.

One of the most heartfelt acts of remembrance I heard was a song...written the day after his assassination in April 1968 by bassist Gene Taylor and performed live with hardly any rehearsal the day after that, by the one and only Nina Simone: "Why? (The King of Love is Dead)."

Much of what is said and done in these annual days of remembrance amount to little more than a 30-second sound-bite version of a man, a life, a movement, and a historic period that defy trivialization. Given the central relevance of his life and legacy, this is an effort to do more than join in the collective trivialization, and I urge you to do likewise.

For those of you interested in exploring the extraordinary life, work, times and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., you can find online a treasure trove of information - not only of most of his published writings but also of his speeches on video and audiotape (so that you can see and listen to them just as they were delivered), as well as biographies, articles, an interactive chronology, videos, etc.- such as this brief introduction to some of his most iconic statements.

Listen to his September 18, 1963 Eulogy for the Martyred Children (audio) which he delivered three days after the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham (a scene unforgettably depicted near the beginning of the film "Selma,” which I strongly recommend to you), at the funeral service for three of the four children - Addie Mae Collins, Carol Robertson, Denise McNair, and Cynthia Wesley - killed in the bombing, an irredeemable act of white supremacist terrorism (it took place less than three weeks after his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the base of the Lincoln Memorial) that continues to reverberate to this day. He said in his eulogy that day:

"These children - unoffending, innocent, and beautiful - were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity. And yet they died nobly... They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism... They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream. And so my friends, they did not die in vain... [H]istory has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive... The death of these little children may lead our whole Southland from the low road of man's inhumanity to man to the high road of peace and brotherhood. These tragic deaths may lead our nation to substitute an aristocracy of character for an aristocracy of color. The spilled blood of these innocent girls may cause the whole citizenry of Birmingham to transform the negative extremes of a dark past into the positive extremes of a bright future. Indeed this tragic event may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience..."

I also recommend listening to these 3 songs written in the wake of the bombing (1963 to 1964): John Coltrane's "Alabama, "Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam," and Joan Baez's "Birmingham Sunday."

I regularly assign his Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963) in my courses in which he wrote: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." Written as a response to local clergy's "call for unity" during the protests of 1963, the letter's defense of nonviolent resistance and its insistence on justice for all have made it a foundational text of both the civil rights movement and history classrooms.

And you might want to listen to his most important and provocative speech (arguably his best, if less well known), at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967 - Beyond Vietnam. The war at that time was in Vietnam, but what he had to say then remains eerily prescient, more relevant than ever:

"...because my conscience leaves me no other choice... I speak as a citizen of the world... We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity"...

Exactly one year later to the day he was shot to death in Memphis. That year, from April 4, 1967 to April 4, 1968, was not only his last, but also his worst - as lucidly told in a book I recommend to you: Death of a King, by Tavis Smiley with David Ritz.

I also encourage you to read some of his shortest and best known speeches: the one he gave in Oslo when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Dec. 10, 1964 (he was 35 years old at the time), and of course his most famous "I Have A Dream" oration at the base of the Lincoln Memorial (on the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation), keynoting the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, in which he urged the nation to "make real the promises of democracy." (Just over two weeks later, the horrific KKK terrorist bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham killed four girls who were attending Sunday school that day - see above.)

Yet Dr. King was no dreamer, but a man of action par excellence. He sought, indefatigably and with few illusions, economic and political power and justice for a people long downtrodden – yet driven by his repeated conviction that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

And he could be prophetic, never more so than in his last speech - "I've Been to the Mountaintop" - on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated. (In that last oration he recalled an incident from 1958, when he was stabbed and nearly killed in Harlem - he would have died then had he but sneezed - and in particular he recalled a letter from a ninth-grade white girl that he received among thousands of others while he was recuperating.)

Today, once more in a ratcheted-up climate of hate and fear and unending war, do take a moment to reflect on and expand your awareness and knowledge of a life that made and continues to make a difference, and a voice for reason that is missed and needed more than ever."

Rubén G. Rumbaut is a Distinguished Professor of sociology at UC Irvine. He is the author of more than two hundred scholarly papers on immigrants and refugees in the U.S., coauthor or coeditor of eighteen books and special issues, and an elected fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education.