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Article: The U.S. Must Live Up to Its Ideals.(United States)
- Article from:
- The World and I
- Article date:
- February 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Mvemba Phezo Dizolele is Africa columnist for United Press International.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail in 1963. "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."
As a boy growing up in Zaire, I watched with dismay the images of civil rights demonstrations on television. My young mind was marked by pictures of white police officers beating helpless black teenagers while ferocious dogs clung to their flesh. "That America is a hell of a place," I wondered.
Born after independence, I did not experience the brutal ...