After Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life was snuffed out by an assassin 50 years ago, my father spent his afternoons basking in the glow of the fire lit by his words.
It was a fire that smoldered in the souls of African-Americans like my father, people who lived to see the powerful words of a black preacher topple a social order built on white supremacy.
Almost every afternoon, in the months and years after King's murder, he'd settle into his family room recliner and listen to “The Great March to Freedom.” That album, distributed by Motown, was a recording of a speech King made in Detroit on June 23, 1963, to thousands of people seeking motivation and marching orders on how to continue battling segregation and racism.
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