On this day each year honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., there are many people who expend too much time recalling the details of his death rather than appreciating the hard, challenging work in which he engaged in what was a very different America than today.

It was an America too caught up in noticing people’s skin color, as well as other physical differences, characteristics and limitations, while failing to acknowledge that minorities were people also — people who experienced the same feelings, anxieties, pressures and desires for betterment as those who otherwise considered themselves to be better or special when, in fact, they were not.

It was an America that would better itself only after it, for the most part, abandoned its prejudices, attitudes centered on superiority, and general disrespect and hatred of humans unconscionably considered to be not worthy of, or entitled to, the rights others routinely enjoyed.

It was a time when America was in bitter conflict with and within itself, yet believed — thankfully incorrectly — that it never would be allowed to change.

Back in those days, racial equality was the farthest thing from many people’s minds, especially in the South.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. thought differently and was convinced in his heart that the capacity for positive change existed within this nation’s borders and amid the right-thinking people who lived here, regardless of their nationality or skin color. Fortunately, he had the ability to impart that thinking on many others who had not yet recognized a window — or opportunity — to grow that realization.

King was not a short-timer on the racial-equality-seeking front. About a decade before his death, he was present at the graduation ceremony at which one of the Little Rock Nine –one of the first nine black students to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in September 1957 –received his diploma.

September 1957 was a tumultuous time in Little Rock, which was hellbent on keeping intact the sentiment that blacks were inferior and that freedom and opportunity depended on the color of a person’s skin. King learned much from what was happening in that city at the time.

Yet King was willing to be patient and work toward integration in a nonviolent way, allowing the “right channels” to evolve and establish the foundation for change.

One of the “channels” in question was President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who on Sept. 24, 1957, explained to a national television audience why he decided to send the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to achieve orderly integration of Central High School.

“Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts,” Eisenhower declared, contrary to the opinion expressed earlier that month by Arkansas’ governor, Orval Faubus, specifically on the day before the nine black students were to attend their first classes at Central.

Faubus had proclaimed that it would “not be possible to restore or to maintain order and protect the lives and property of the citizens if forcible integration is carried out tomorrow.”

Faubus was wrong and King’s attitude was right as he carried his efforts forward over the next decade, until his life was cut short by white supremacist sniper James Earl Ray in Memphis.

As Americans today deal with current issues, it would be well if more studied the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to gain perspective on “how we got here.”