An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.

- Thomas Paine

In a sense, maybe it can be seen as a good thing that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Perhaps even more than that, it might have been the best thing that could’ve happened to America at the time. Had the Baptist minister not been assassinated, we would in all likelihood not remember him as we do now. When a public figure is assassinated, history has the tendency to assume a carte blanche while writing down what it feels he should be remembered for. And to ignore what, for whatever reason, it feels should be forgotten.

To whitewash a man’s life.

We don’t remember that while King was a graduate student at Boston University he plagiarized significant portions of his PhD thesis while his professors knowingly looked the other way. The “Dr.” in his title then carries lies and deceit and dishonesty we would rather not acknowledge. Because acknowledging them would mean tarnishing his legacy, admonishing someone who’s supposed to embody godliness.

After all, we’re told from a very young age that Dr. Martin Luther King saved America from herself, forgave our sins of racism and oppression with the power of his dream. Thousands of years of oppression, all washed away with the blood of his assassination. We are told his was a dream that did not die with him, we are told his dream was his final message to the American people as they gathered on the Capitol Mall in Washington DC on that spring afternoon.

And yet, that dream was not his final message. In what would be the final months of his life Dr. Martin Luther King began to preach a message that was markedly different from the one we willfully choose to remember him by. It was a message that earned him the condemnation of almost every mainstream newspaper in America, with even Reader’s Digest warning he was trying to bring about an “insurrection.”

No one is taught this in school, for the same reason that no one is taught that Dr. King cheated to get his doctorate.

Because all of us seek to hold onto ideals that tell us that everything is going to be okay. That we aren’t as ugly and oppressive as those who hate us make us out to be and that if we just hold hands and sing kum-by-ya once a year the problems will just take care of themselves. But then that would be a lie. As millions of Americans living in and around Washington DC were so terribly reminded in the fall of 2002 when Dr King’s final message came horribly to life through the same means that had caused his death.

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You probably take three-inches for granted on a regular basis. Three-inches might’ve only been the difference between being able to ride the rollercoaster or having to watch you big brother go without you, between tripping up the stairs and running up them, or accidentally selecting the wrong grade of gas while you’re filling up your car. But then three-inches can be the difference between a scary moment and a fender bender, a missed shot and a National Championship, or between a surgeon taking your life and saving it.

On October 2nd three-inches was the difference between Ann Chapman, a clerk working the cashier at her local Michael’s craft store, only feeling an odd rush of air ruffle her hair – and having her brain explode out the side of her head. For whatever reason the high-velocity round meant for her head missed. It might’ve been a gust of wind or it might’ve been the sniper not adjusting for the store’s glass window deflecting the bullet’s path or something else entirely. But he missed.