http://www.msnbc.com/news/MLKHOLIDAY_Front.asp?launch=/modules/black_history/mlk_vidgal/default.asp
>From: "Cunningham, Donald" <cunningh@indiana.edu>
>Reply-To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>To: "'xmca@weber.ucsd.edu'" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>Subject: If dream were practice, oh what a community!
>Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 09:34:32 -0500
>
>Martin Luther King Jr. - August 28, 1963
>
>
>
>I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history the
>greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score
>years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today,
>signed
>the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon
>of hope to millions of slaves, who had been seared in the flames of
>withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of
>their captivity. But one hundred years later, the colored America is still
>not free. One hundred years later, the life of the colored American is
>still
>sadly crippled by the manacle of segregation and the chains of
>discrimination.
>
>One hundred years later, the colored American lives on a lonely island of
>poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred
>years later, the colored American 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 a shameful condition. In a sense we have come to
>our
>Nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great 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, yes, black men as well as white men,
>would be guaranteed to 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 its colored people a bad check, a
>check
>that 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 security of justice.
>
>We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce
>urgency of Now. This is not time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or
>to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
>
>Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy.
>
>Now it the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to
>the sunlit path of racial justice.
>
>Now it the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice
>to the solid rock of brotherhood.
>
>Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God's children.
>
>It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and
>to underestimate the determination of it's colored citizens. This
>sweltering
>summer of the colored people'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 colored
>Americans 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 colored
>citizen 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.
>
>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 colored person's basic mobility is
>from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.
>
>We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their
>selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "for white only."
>
>We cannot be satisfied as long as a colored person in Mississippi cannot
>vote and a colored person 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 your trials and
>tribulations. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom
>left you battered by storms of persecutions 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 South Carolina go
>back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of
>our modern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be
>changed.
>
>Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you, my friends, we
>have 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 out in the red hills of Georgia the sons of
>former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners 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 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 their
>character.
>
>I have a dream today.
>
>I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with
>its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and
>nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and
>black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white
>girls as sisters and brothers.
>
>I have a dream today.
>
>I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill
>shall
>be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be
>made plains 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 that I will go back to the South with.
>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 climb 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
>new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I
>sing.
>Land where my father's 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 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 snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
>
>Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
>
>But not only that, let freedom, ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
>
>Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every
>mountainside.
>
>When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement 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 spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we
>are free at last."
>
nAtE
vygotsky@charter.net
http://webpages.charter.net/schmolze1/
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