August 28, 2013 – the world paid tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King for delivering his iconic speech, “I have a dream.”
Thousands of civil rights activists landed on Washington, D.C. for what became as one of the largest rallies in the United States, which changed the course of the nation’s history. Three days after he made the famous speech, King was assassinated.
King referred to the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed millions of black slaves.
“But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
“One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition,” King told his listeners.
“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 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!”
Has Dr. King’s dream been realized 50 years later? One wonders if African Americans have progressed since then.
The answer to the above question is not easy. Yes, slavery has been abolished but there are still African Americans who live below the poverty line. As President Obama said in his 50th anniversary speech, the marchers five decades ago “were there seeking jobs as well as justice; not just the absence of oppression but the presence of economic opportunity.
“For what does it profit a man, Dr. King would ask, to sit at an integrated lunch counter if he can’t afford the meal?”
Pointing out that there were still racial disparities, Obama said although many advances have been made by African-Americans over 50 years, black unemployment “has remained almost twice as high as white unemployment” and that “the gap in wealth between the races has not lessened; it’s grown.”
Stanley Miller, 58, a retired Washington, D.C., bus driver, said during the march that young African-Americans have benefited from 50 years of struggle. However, he claimed they don’t fully understand or appreciate the movement’s history of sacrifice.
“Sometime I hear people saying nothing has changed, but for someone to grow up the way I grew up in the cotton fields of Alabama to now be serving in the U.S. Congress makes me want to tell them come and walk in my shoes,” Mr. Lewis said to cheers.
Even on that August day in 1963 when King and thousands marched, they had no way of knowing that due to their march, in 2013 there would a black president inaugurating their anniversary of the march. Who would have thought that the U.S., the most powerful nation on earth, would have an African American president? This is certainly the beginning, yet there’s more to be done. Obama’s election to the highest office in the land is due to the courage and actions of leaders like King.
“To dismiss the magnitude of this process, to suggest, as some sometimes do, that little has changed, that dishonors the courage and the sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years,” Obama said.
The King dream will be unfulfilled, however, until such time as African Americans do not have equality in jobs and until such time as they do not earn enough to sit on the table of equality for a meal. Let’s hope that during the next anniversary, things would be better for all Americans.
