Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.
(January 15,
1929 – April 4, 1968)
‘I Have A Dream’: MLK
Promise of Freedom And Justice
To Minority Citizens
(M. Javed Naseem)
The civil rights guaranteed by our founding fathers through the
most sacred document of American history – the American Constitution – and the
subsequent historical First Amendment, are being trampled by the sons of
slave-traders, the bigots, the hypocrites, the far-right extremists, and the
Fascists. The only difference is that their grandfathers were engaged in the
trade of Negro slaves whereas they are promoting and practicing the trade of all-color
slaves. The irony is that the screams and cries of today’s slaves are buried
under the noisy drumbeat (thanks to the media) of democracy, civil liberties and
security.
January 15 marks the birth anniversary of Martin Luther King
Jr., a Baptist minister, a social-political activist and a great humanitarian
who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the mid-1950s
till his death by assassination in 1968.
He played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of
Black American citizens in the South as well as other areas of the nation. His
campaign contributed to the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting
Rights Act of 1965, winning for him also the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
Many books have been written about Martin Luther King Jr., who
was one of the most lauded African-American leaders in history. To sum up his
life full of struggle (or Jihad against evil and injustice), I can only say
that he went through Hell. All his life he was in and out of prison. Eventually,
he was assassinated (shot dead, just like JF Kennedy), only four years after
Kennedy was shot dead; and probably by the same mafia, for the same reasons.
The entire world remembers his historic speech ‘I have A
Dream’, delivered on the steps of the
Lincoln Memorial in Washington ,
DC
‘I Have a Dream’
The Speech:
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 today, 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 their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is 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
languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his
own land.
So we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we’ve 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 the promise that all men, yes,
black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this
promissory note in so far as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of
honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people
a bad check, a 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. And 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 make the
real the promises of democracy; 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 lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the
solid rock of brotherhood; now is the time to make justice a reality for all of
God’s children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the
moment. 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. And 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 worn 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 protests 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 a 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 they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our
freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we
shall always 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 the Negro is
the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality; 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 our children are stripped of
their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites
Only”; we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot
vote, and the 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
jail 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 South Carolina . 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, 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, 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!
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 — one day right there 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 exalted,
and every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be 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 that I 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
brother-hood. 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. And this will be the day.
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new
meaning, “My country ’t is of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land
where my father 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 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 Lookout Mountain of Tennessee; let freedom ring from every hill and
mole hill of Mississippi. “From every mountainside, let freedom ring.”
And when this happens, and 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.”
Source: Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have A
Dream: Writings and Speeches that Changed the World, ed. James Melvin
Washington (San Francisco: Harper, 1986), 102-106.
Here’s the video-clip of that historic speech:
“I have been to
the mountaintop.
I have seen the
promised land.”
– MLK
Here’s a short video-clip of the last speech of Martin Luther King
Jr.: “I’ve been to the mountaintop. I have seen the promised land.”
**********
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