First appeared on Blogcritics.
Usually when I used Dr. King’s speech in class, I also would include the amazing poem “A Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes. This poem is the perfect companion piece, and it examines what happens when “the dream” is not realized because others stand in the way. His last line has resonance to this day when he asks, “Or does it explode?” This has touched my students over the years because after reading Dr. King’s speech, they can analyze its power in a different perspective, one which echoes King’s concerns but also raises new ones.
People only have to look at recent events to confirm this to be true. In the country’s – and I humbly say the world’s – most famous city, a policy called “stop and frisk” targets people of color, most especially young black men. In Brooklyn the statue of Jackie Robinson is defaced with racial slurs and swastikas. A football player named Riley Cooper uses a deplorable word for blacks with arrogance, and a world away in Switzerland even the famous Oprah Winfrey is denied the right to shop because of the color of her skin. Maybe most importantly, black people (and many whites as well) in this country see the “not guilty” verdict in the killing of unarmed Florida teen Trayvon Martin as an alarming sign that Mr. King is not at all wrong when he says “the journey not complete.” They rightly wonder at this moment in time if it has stalled or even stopped completely.
Other speakers included Attorney General Eric Holder, civil rights activist Al Sharpton, and Representative John Lewis of Georgia. Mr. Sharpton was especially eloquent as he charged the crowd not to forget the sacrifices of others and reminded them of Medgar Evers, saying that his I.D. should be good enough for everyone to have the right to vote. The fact that the right to vote is even still an issue in 2013 has to prove there is something wrong with the big picture in America. If the huge turnout is not enough to remind people of the significance of what happened 50 years ago at the Lincoln Memorial, it should also be a sign that there is so much yet to do today. The people in that crowd and those speakers made it very clear that there has to be a new dialogue about race in this country.
It is necessary and compelling that the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was honored on the 50th anniversary of his famous speech, but now we have to go about continuing the process. The only way to do that is to not only respect his “dream” but to live it on a daily basis. 50 years ago he started the conversation and it is up to us to continue it, enhance it, and push for the day when silence will mean more than wishing the issue of race would go away, but rather that his dream has been so well realized that there is nothing left to say.
Photo credits: hughes-poets.org; crowd-nytimes; king the 3rd-AP; dr. king-navylive.dodlive.mil
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