In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I thought I would share with you a post I wrote a while back, when we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's famous "I Have A Dream" speech. I hope you enjoy...
Dr. King…I Have a Dream
A couple of weeks ago we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of 250,000, and a television audience numbering in the millions on August 28, 1963, to deliver a speech that is easily one of the most remembered and beloved speeches in American history.
It ranks right up there with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Roosevelt’s December 8th, 1941 speech, Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, and Reagan’s Challenger speech. Most Americans have no trouble identifying who said, “Four score and seven years ago”, or “December 7th will live on as a day of infamy”, or “ Ask not what your country can do for you…”, or ”…reached out my hand and touched the face of God”. “I have a dream”, will forever be remembered and cherished as well.
What is most interesting about Dr. King’s speech are those words, the most important part of his speech, were not in the original draft according to Dr. King’s speech writer, Dr. Clarence Jones. Jones was about 50 feet away from Dr. King as he delivered the first seven paragraphs of the speech as written.
Jones said it was singer, Mahalia Jackson who helped change the course of history. Jackson yelled out to King, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin. Tell’ em about the dream." The rest of his celebrated speech was completely extemporaneous.
With that, King proclaimed, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!”
I was 14-years old when Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. My parents certainly weren’t racists, but they did see Dr. King as a trouble-maker. We would sit in front of our television and watch the race riots happening all over the country, the sit-ins, and all the violence…and my parents wrongly blamed Dr. King for all the trouble…for stirring up violence. I think they would have felt the same way about anyone in his position…regardless the color of their skin.
Fifty years has a way of bringing clarity to world events. Every once and a while, I think God intervenes in certain situations and puts words in our mouth. I think that is what happened back in 1963 when Dr. King went off course with his planned speech, and uttered,” I have a dream that my four little children will one day not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!”
My parents, and a great many other Americans of the time, needed to confront their stable status quo, where a vast segment of Americans were forced to live a second-class existence, and realize the current situation could not be tolerated anymore…all for the sake of having civil peace. After that speech, my parents came to see Dr. King in a different light. They saw him as someone whose message transcended race. His was a message about finding a peaceful path to equal rights for all men and women.
What Dr. King said on those steps that day could have easily been whispered in his ear by God. It could have been God saying, “Tell em’ about My dream, Martin. Tell ‘em about My dream.”
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