Since I started this blog in 2007, I've written several posts about Martin Luther King, Jr. Yesterday was his real birthday but today's the day we celebrate. For many years I marched in a parade on MLK, Jr. day. Now I do quieter things.
But each year on this day I always read the "I Have a Dream" speech. I know we have a ways to go but I feel comforted in the knowledge that many of Dr. King's dreams have been fulfilled in my lifetime.
Following are a few excerpts, ones that are most familiar to you. See what you think.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation...
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
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...
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
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