The death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. 40 years ago changed many things -- ironically, most all for the good, despite the killer's evil intent.
The assassin thought he was getting rid of King and his message of racial equality. But King turned out to be even more powerful in death than in life. His life and his legacy are more prominent today than on the evening he was assassinated in Memphis 40 years ago today.
King's death brought to the forefront the need for our nation to change its ways of dealing with people of different colors.
He may have been a black Moses, attempting to lead his people to the promised land, but King did then and does now inspire people of all races to seek equality and to look to the content of other people's character, not the color of their skin.
Young people today look back to the 1960s and see, in the weathered images of our most turbulent decade since the Civil War, a messenger of peace. But at the time, King was regarded among much of the power establishment as a threat, particularly after he turned his sights on the unpopular Vietnam War -- despite preaching endlessly from the book of nonviolent change.
Yet, if he was a threat to the order, then perhaps it is because the order at the time was wrong -- wrong in every way, in separating people by race.
But whoever killed Martin Luther King, for whatever twisted motivation, could not have known how his death would galvanize the civil rights movement -- and only make it more diverse.
His dream has yet to be fully realized, but how far we've come since then. Today, purveyors of racism are dealt with sharply by a government that takes seriously its laws against discrimination -- that is, if the ever-watchful free market doesn't get to the perpetrators first.
And a few years back, this country helped lead an international rebuke of apartheid in South Africa -- and brought that system down as well.
So much has changed since that awful day 40 years ago. Martin Luther King is only stronger.
And, as a result, so is our nation.
