Real Talk!

Martin Luther King Jr, leader of the American civil rights movement of the 1960s, fought toward making racial justice and equality a reality in America.

In 1963, Dr King made a powerful speech that has come to be known the “I Have A Dream Speech” at the Lincoln Memorial at the end of the memorable “March of Washington”. & As much as the words, it was the passionate delivery that etched each detail deeply into my then, five-year-old mind.

As a white schoolgirl, living in the suburbs of Ottawa, it was certainly not the first time that I had seen people of colour, but it was the first time that I had any profound thought about skin colour and that it was an issue.

Thus began my fascination with newscasts, documentary films and my “Alex P Keaton”-like existence.

I gobbled up the stories... like what had happened to Rosa Parks. I couldn’t believe it. Then, the September. 16th Street Baptist Church bombing… followed by the Kennedy assassination. There was lot to watch in those days and a lot for my small mind to think about.

Between television and radio news broadcasts, I would have my ear on the transistor radio… I just loved the Miracles, the Marvelettes and the Four Seasons… it never crossed my mind that they were flesh and bone… or to concern myself about their skin colour.

I remember when Cassius Clay changed his name to Mohammed Ali… and I remember wondering why he wouldn’t want to carry the name of a historic and prominent anti-slavery crusader. Most people were simply interested in his boxing prowess.

The Malcolm X assassination really threw me. It was difficult to find people who would talk about him, with me. & When Robert Kennedy was gunned down- I was just about to celebrate my 10th birthday…

and while I was secretly practicing to become a “Supreme” … to sing that feminine harmony and move in perfect synchronization- with big hair, long eyelashes, beautiful fingernails and diaphanous dresses….

I didn’t feel much like partying… the world, after all, was going crazy.

In retrospect, I realize that I had, in a sense, lost my innocence.

Martin Luther King Jr, with his moving delivery and powerful message had awakened something within me… and by 1968, I was convinced that the United States was a deeply troubled nation, in need of help and I felt compelled to do something.

Surely, Canadians didn’t have these sorts of problems! I kept wondering, why it was taking so long for race relations to resolve in the U.S., after all, it had been over 100 years since Lincoln had freed the slaves! & it was simply common sense that all men (and women) had been created as equals.

Henceforth, I became interested in history, politics, sociology and anthropology. I became a bit of a bookworm and more than a little precocious.

While self-studying the American Civil War, I realized that the Emancipation Proclamation had been a somewhat limited document, releasing only those slaves in Confederated States and I considered that it may have simply been a strategy… and I realized how easily history might be manipulated.

It was then, that I opened a new set of beliefs… that the details of history were of little consequence, that regardless of what had happened "before"... when you recognize something unacceptable it had to be changed.

Thus began my interest in activism. It timed beautifully with the rest of the world and although I was about a decade younger than most of the crowd, they accepted me.

After all, that’s what is was all about. Acceptance, unification, civil liberty.

A man named Barack Obama made a show- stopping speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. That speech included these words:

“…it's not enough for just some of us to prosper. For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga.

A belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper -- that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

“….Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?” “….I'm not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a mill worker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. The audacity of hope!

In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation; the belief in things not seen; the belief that there are better days ahead. I believe we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity. I believe we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair. I believe that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us. America!”

& Now, tomorrow, Barack Obama will stand at the Lincoln Memorial… that same place where Dr Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the hearts of millions. & In a representative culmination of King’s dream, this man of colour, Barack Obama, will place his hand upon Abraham Lincoln’s historic inaugural bible as he is sworn in, as America’s 44th President.

Pretty heady stuff.

The inauguration is said to include 58 federal, state and local agencies working together to protect this brave soul. It will be the largest inaugural security operation in history. Thousands of extra police, law enforcement agents and troops will be on hand. The plan is that there will be one plain-clothed officer for every hundred people.

Washington will be shut down for some 24 hours. The streets will be closed and no aircraft will fly over the city, save and except for patrols of fighter jets. All of the buildings will be stationed by Secret Service snipers. D.C. insiders expect the festivities to cost fifty million dollars.

As President, Mr Obama and his family will face many more challenges. The country is in the midst of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression and involved in two contentious wars. Barack Obama was elected on his ability to inspire belief. He embodies the greatest of ideals and hope for a Nation that for about forty years has had a dream…

Text of the speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr.
August 28, 1963. Washington, D.C.

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.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still 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 languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. 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 rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, 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 a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four 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.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom 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!"