Welcome to this special edition of On Point. I'm Marvin Blake Jr. On this Marvin Luther King Jr. day, January 19th, 2026, we all pause not only to remember his dream but to reclaim a discipline, the daily practice of dignity, courage, and forward motion. Dr. King's legacy is often framed in thunderous moments, marches, speeches, and moral showdowns, but some of his most enduring lessons came quietly in stories about ordinary work done extraordinarily well and about the responsibility each of us bear when injustice appears in our midst.
One such lesson shines literally in Dr. King's recollection of a shoe shine man in Montgomery, Alabama. Dr. King often spoke of a man whose job was to shine shoes, not a general, not a judge, a working man who took pride in his craft. Dr. King urged the audience to imagine that if this man was called to shine shoes, he should do it so well that people would stop and say, here lived a great shoe shine man.
In different tellings, Dr. King described the best shoe shine man in Montgomery as someone who approached his work with excellence, dignity, and self-respect. The message was unmistakable. Greatness is not conferred by title.
It is revealed by commitment. Whether sweeping streets or shining shoes, Dr. King insisted that all honest labor deserved honesty when done with pride. In a society quick to measure worth by status, he offered a radical recalibration of how you should serve matters more than where you stand.
He often spoke of forward motion no matter the pace. Dr. King paired dignity with persistence. He said, if you can't fly, then run.
He said in one of his most quoted refrains, if you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.
This was not a call to haste. It was a command against despair. He often spoke of the cause of standing idly by.
Perhaps Dr. King's most unsettling warning was not aimed at those who commit wrongdoing, but at those who witness it and do nothing. Again and again, he reminded the nation that history's harshest judgment often falls not on the loud perpetrators of injustice, but on the quiet bystanders who allow it to continue. Wrongdoing, he augured, flourishes when good people choose comfort over conscience.
This challenge remains piercingly relevant. In an age of endless information and constant outage, the temptation to watch, scroll, and move on has never been greater. Dr. King did not accept neutrality as innocence.
To stand idly by, he taught, is to participate by omission. On this MLK Day, Dr. King's words should do more than inspire. They assign responsibility.
Be the best at your work, whatever it is, and do it with pride. Keep moving forward, no matter how slow the progress feels. And when injustice appears, refuse the safety of silence.
Dr. King did not ask us to be perfect. He asked us to be faithful to our labor, to our conscience, and to one another. Sixty-plus years later, the path he marked is still open, still demanding, and still possible.
- Marvin Blake, Jr.
Brought to you by Lance Lopez with Farm Bureau, Harrington Law Firm and the Sharpco Hotel Group.
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