Jan. 16, Rick Halperin, director of the SMD Dallas Human Rights Program, for a commentary advocating that the U.S. should follow the belief of Dr. Martin Luther King and end capital punishment. Published in the Dallas Morning News under the heading: America should honor MLK’s vision by halting the death penalty: https://bit.ly/3GHjtP4
On Monday the nation will pause, perhaps too briefly, to remember and pay tribute to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., arguably the leading U.S. (and global) civil and human rights activist who was the voice of reason and conscience during the onset and growth of the modern civil rights struggle in this country between 1955 and 1968.
As America reflects on King’s life, oratory and inspirational vision of what this country could, should and is still struggling to become, I would urge us all to remember another anniversary commemorated on the same day. On Jan. 17, 1977, Gary Gilmore, a convicted felon on death row in Utah, was executed by a Utah firing squad and thus became the first condemned inmate to be put to death in this country in 10 years — a mere six months after the U.S. Supreme Court, on July 2, 1976, upheld the legality of the death penalty in the case of Gregg vs. Georgia.
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