MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR

Martin Luther King, Jr. was indeed a hero, a great, courageous, noble man. And he more than deserves to be honored.

But the journalists keep praising America, not Dr. King. They write about "Jefferson's Temple" and the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument--and even about the FDR memorial. And they write about how wonderful it is to have Dr. King's memorial among those great men--as though he ought to feel honored to be among them.

Jefferson, they say, was the great "philosopher," the noble mind who founded our country. They don't mention his slaves, or his slave children--his own children--whom he sold on the open slave market to buy books. Or his determination that a black person could not be a poet. Washington did free his slaves--but only at his own death.

I like the idea of Dr. King being with Lincoln and FDR. They are good company. Those three were great men--like Dr. King. But why not add a memorial for Eleanor Roosevelt? She was as great an American as her husband. And she was our first black first lady.

The journalists write about looking out from Dr. King's memorial across the basin to Jefferson, and put Dr. King in a line from Jefferson to Lincoln or maybe Washington. I prefer to see it as Dr. King alongside FDR and Lincoln--and Jefferson off on the "other side." Segregated, as it were. Isolated. We have come a long way since Jefferson, and he is best left behind.

Let's celebrate Dr. King for himself and what he did for all of us.