Fifty Years of Dreaming

On August 28, 1963, six men, including a black Baptist minister from Alabama, spoke at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

And it's the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s words that we recall most today, especially from the last third of his address where he began repeating the resounding refrain about his dream of equality and justice. It's about at that time, in fact, where he switched from speaking to preaching, relying on the rhythms and cadence and language that sounded from his pulpit on Sunday morning. Today, the "I Have a Dream" speech is considered one of the finest in America oratory, and certainly ranks at the very top of anything any modern public figure has said.

It was, in a way, a national sermon, prophetically proclaiming the dangers of hatred -- not only for the oppressed, but for the oppressor. King believed that while those who were hated could find help and healing in the arms of God when that hatred grew strong, those who hated would find no rest from the poison that corroded them until they could set down their hatred and embrace the kinship of all humanity as creatures of God. He was a pastor, and his words tried to call to those other sheep as well. That they have had great success is evident. Many speakers at an event today marking that 50th anniversary pointed out that no law segregating lunch counters and bathrooms and water fountains and theaters and buses or anything else would pass muster today. My own parents might not be as enlightened as modern society might wish in matters of race, but they considered the slur we today call "the n-word" as the equivalent of any of the magic four-letter words that earned rebuke, solitary confinement in one's room until dinner and eventually, a date with some soapy toothpaste substitute.

That we have much to do is also evident. Today's foes are not bullying sheriffs and willfully blind public officials who would not even make the effort to disagree with King's ideas because that would have meant listening to them. Today's foes are cultural tendencies to exalt the ignorant and violent, to denigrate responsibility and achievement, and to view as somehow more culturally authentic words and behaviors that King might have been among the first to lament and urge be abandoned. They are those who mean well but who accept less, and by doing so expect less, and by expecting less encourage less, until less becomes the norm. And they are still those who believe that the ultimate arbiter of human quality is melanin, and that people who have amounts similar to their own are somehow better than people who don't and who feel justified in separating and treating as "other" any who do.

As is proper, the president of the United States spoke on this 50th anniversary of such an important declaration of what his nation promised to be, and of what it should be and could be, and how its people could encourage that to happen. You do not have to read this blog for very long to learn that my own opinion of this president's policies and abilities is not high, but he has shown a gift for speaking. Today he was good -- he didn't touch the speech of 50 years ago, but another 50 years can go by and we will still be waiting for someone who could. He didn't match his own personal best from the Democratic National Convention in 2004, a speech that turned the national spotlight towards him, but he was good.

And he himself was a man who 50 years ago would have been one of those told to drink over there, sit over there, go eat somewhere else, who would have been the target of the hoses and the dogs and the batons and the vicious words of hate. Yes, he is targeted by those who dislike his policies, and he draws no small amount of hateful rhetoric, but the president who hears none of that has yet to be born or to serve. The fact is that the man who stood where King stood at the Lincoln Memorial today as the chief executive of the United States of America is one who would have had to have stood with King if too many white people wanted seats on the bus. He would have had to drink with King from water fountains that said "colored," or sat in balconies instead of on the main floor of the theater, or eaten at the back door of the restaurant because no one would seat him, or walked with King past hotel after hotel until he finally came to one that would allow him to stay.

But he does not have to do any of these things. People stand when he enters. Traffic stops when he passes. The powerful call him, "Sir," and address him not just as "Mister," but "Mister President." Martin Luther King Jr., had he not been slain just five years after this speech, would be 84 today and very possibly alive to see this.

And although he might have had to pinch himself to see if he was still dreaming, he would have found -- I hope to his great pleasure and satisfaction -- that he was not.