Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was 39 when assassinated and this year he would have been 87. Across the nation, the King Holiday is celebrated. Yet increasingly generations of Americans are clueless of his revolutionary spirit.

The King Holiday should not be a ritual but a call to action. King ranks among the top revolutionaries in modern times. It took a revolutionary to desegregate buses in the Jim Crow South. Less than a year after bus desegregation in Montgomery, King went to Ghana for that nation’s Independence Day festivities. It was King’s first time in Africa, and he liked what he saw. He teared up as he joined in the celebration of that country’s freedom. “Both segregation in America and colonialism in Africa … were based on the same thing — white supremacy and contempt for life,” King noted. His Ghanaian experience confirmed that non-violence was an effective strategy. He returned to the United States reassured, determined and more focused.

It was King’s revolutionary spirit which took over 250,000 people on the March on Washington. At the Lincoln Memorial, he warned of the urgency of the time: “Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy … now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” The following year in a speech at the University of Dayton Fieldhouse — King raised the stakes. “Segregation is evil, sinful and immoral,” he thundered, adding: “It is necessary to say to you not only have we come a long, long way, but we have a long, long way to go.”