JMC 414: Wednesday, Feb. 4 assignment

Andrea Steele

02/04/15

“I Have a Dream,” August 28, 1963.

“We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome someday,” were the words that echoed through the air, flowing out of the mouths of over 200,000 people as they marched to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to hear to the dream of one man.

Americans – both black and white – standing behind Civil Rights, stood shoulder-to-shoulder Wednesday to listen to the powerful words spoken by a passionate Baptist minister from Atlanta, GA.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has a dream. That dream is for blacks and whites to one day be seen as equals, for his children to one day in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin.

“1963 is not an end, just the beginning,” King said. It’s been over one hundred years since Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves who were in the 10 remaining states in rebellion.

“But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free,” King said. “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 languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.”

 King passionately proclaimed his dream for all listening, in hopes that they too might share in this vision: the vision that this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”

Let freedom ring.