Commemoration of King's India Pilgrimage: Tuesday 17 February

[Clayborne Carson]

While the congressional delegation left for Agra and the Taj Mahal, I went to the American Center to deliver a lecture. My talk, "The Living Dream: Carrying Forward the Legacy of Gandhi and King," depicted both visionaries as major participants in history's greatest freedom struggle - the successful global 20th century effort to improve the lives of most of humanity by overcoming colonialism, the American Jim Crow system, and South African apartheid. Pointing out that the two visionaries understood the potential transformative power of traditional Western democratic, egalitarian ideals drawn from Christianity and the Enlightenment, they also failed to realize their expansive vision of global peace with social justice based on a universal conception of human rights. Thus, they might well applaud the election of Obama but insist that nonviolent resistance to injustice is still an urgent need for the 21st century.