Monday, January 18, 2021 - Happy ninety-second birthday, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

From October 26, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. delivers a speech to an audience at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: “What is Your Life’s Blueprint?” Speaking for a little over twenty minutes, Dr. King encourages the students to consider making three principles as the solid, sound, and proper foundation for their lives:

(1) A deep belief in your own dignity, your own worth, and your own somebodiness;

(2) The determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor; and

(3) A commitment to the eternal principles of beauty, love, and justice,

One oft-quoted principles which Dr. King preached was the idea that whatever you do, do it to the very best of your abilities: “It isn’t by size that you win or you fail. Be the best at whatever you are,” which he illustrated on this autumn afternoon in 1967 by focusing in on the lot of a street-sweeper. The full quote, below.

If it falls to your lot to be a street-sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. Sweep streets like Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all of the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, 'Here lived a great street-sweeper! Who swept his job well.'