We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
The above is part of one of America's greatest and most important speeches, delivered August 28, 1963 (after being tried out in Detroit, in slightly different form, earlier that summer), by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On August 28, 2011, the MLK Memorial will be dedicated in Washington, D.C. It's about time.
Read the full speech at American Rhetoric.com, and please visit Black History Tours.com, source of the photograph above, for more on the dedication. It's black history, and it's all of our history.
An important man in the history of all people, not just blacks. I know some people that like to crack on the man. I'm sure he would have been the first to admit he wasn't perfect, none of us are, but he was an early force that will eventually bear the fruit he intended.
It's taken longer than I thought. I'm sixty-one and, at eighteen, I naively believed racism and the like would be a thing of the past by the time I reached this advanced age. Would that it were true.
Posted by: Randy Johnson | August 23, 2011 at 06:15 AM
As long as there are people, there will be small-minded idiots, I'm afraid. We just have to work toward fewer of them and more of us.
Posted by: Jeff Mariotte | August 23, 2011 at 06:40 PM