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Dr. King changed my life. Of this, I am certain.

Please understand, I am a white, Southern man - but one born after the civil rights movement. I can only imagine how different my perspective - and my life - would have been had I been born decades earlier - in a different time, a different world! Instead, I grew up in the 1970s and 80s - in a "New South" state capital.

Throughout my formative years, I attended school with classmates from a range of cultural and racial backgrounds. And especially, I never knew a time when black and white school children were segregated. Only years before - or without Dr. King and other rights workers - the reality would have been very different.

I would like to think that I would be a respectful person in an earlier era, but as we are products of our environments, I can only assume that Dr. King influenced the person I - and countless others - became.

The world is not - cannot be - a perfect place. Prejudice seems a basic, involuntary part of all humans - in this humble writer's opinion. We will always have to set aside human frailties and transgressions as part of the process of working toward racial unity. Still, Dr. King's dream lives today.

His dream and actions influenced the capacity of many in my generation to love and respect people who do not look and socialize like ourselves. For that alone, today's America is a better place.

Thank you, Dr. King.

Learn more about this author, Reg Brittain.
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