By John Shearer and Lee A. Daniels

Speaking in March 1968 before Local 1199, the powerful Service Employees International Union of health-care workers in New York City, Martin Luther King, Jr. declared at one point, using one of the many great phrases and insights that fill his speeches that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

He had less than one month to live.

But, like everything King said during his life, we should not think of those words and that idea as fit for his epitaph. We should think of them as words of action – of guidance, direction, commands, inspiration for us the living to continue his work.

King’s work is the unfinished business of America.

It was never his alone, of course, and he didn’t start it – it being the struggle for freedom and justice for all in this land. The names of most of those who did start it nearly four centuries ago by protesting their captivity have long been lost to us. We know that the honor roll is long and contains people of many hues. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his time picked up the blood-stained banner of freedom and carried it forward.

Let each of us strive to be able to say the same.

Lee A. Daniels is Editor-in-Chief of TheDefendersOnline and Director of Communications for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

John Shearer is a photographer, head of his own media consulting firm, and a Contributing Editor for The DefendersOnline.com