Today is the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s I Have a Dream Speech. If you read/listen at all, you know the details – it was the last speech of the day, giving the clear call to action for the 250,000+ who gathered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. (We should not refer to this event as simply the “March on Washington.” “Jobs and Freedom” were critical to the understanding and the hope and intent of the day).
You already know that Dr. King had written a new speech for the day – but that, at one point, Mahalia Jackson called out “Tell them about the dream, Martin. Tell them about the dream.” And, then, he pushed his notes aside, and launched into the soaring, poetic high point of the speech.
And you know that his primary metaphor was this: the check sent back marked “insufficient funds.” It is one of the clearest, greatest thoughts of the century. From the speech:
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 a 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, insofar 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’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
But, I think the greatest strength of this speech is his use of “mythos.” I teach my students that a myth is a story that is true, whether it is true or not. America has a story – a story about equality, freedom, justice for all (“all of God’s children,” he said). Some countries may not make this promise. Ours does — “It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream,” he said.
But, it is a promise not kept for too many. We have not lived up to our story – “that all men are created equal.” Dr. King referred to or quoted from every conceivable “source” – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation — to pound home this “promise” of the American story – that this is the land where all will receive justice, where equality becomes reality.
No, we have not always lived up to our story. “A check which has come back marked insufficient funds” – that’s the ugly reality.
I teach this speech each semester — carefully, fully, thoroughly! I hand out copies of the text. I make the students clear their desks of all else. I have them circle repeated phrases (there are a bunch of repeated phrases: “we will not be satisfied” – “one hundred years later” – “I have a dream” – “Let freedom ring…”).
I have them note that Dr. King called for “freedom to ring” from former free states and from former slave states.
I talk about his true audience. He was speaking to President Kennedy, saying (in essence): “it is time for this to happen. Get behind us, and I can help this movement be and stay non-violent.”
And I go over the text of the speech so carefully that I have had students who learned about this speech in other colleges or universities tell me that though they had learned the background, the context, the “history,” they had never actually looked at the speech itself until my class.
(I’m a believer in letting text itself speak!).
But on this anniversary day of this great speech, I want to especially say this. No one ever asked to be born ______. I did not ask to be born white. No one asks to be born black, or Hispanic, or ________.
You really are what you were born as.
And any human being who ever holds a fact of someone’s birth against them is a particularly despicable human being.
I am a white man. But I was born in Florida in 1950, and saw the open, ugly discrimination against black people in my early years. And when my son played baseball in his elementary school years, in the 1990s, in Dallas, Texas, there were fathers on the team who openly, without a hint of embarrassment, used the “n” word. In the 1990s!
What kind of people are such people?
So, in other words, I know from too much experience that too many people hold “being black” against someone.
Dr. King’s dream was one of justice for all; equality for all. It included an understanding that jobs and freedom played a critical role in pursuit of this dream. But the check, for too many, came back marked “insufficient funds.”
Here is the undergirding of the dream, stated most clearly:
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 the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
And, of course, our understanding of this continues to grow: “black men, white men, all women, all people from all groups…”
Take a good look at everyone around you. Think of the “facts” of their birth. If there is any “fact” of their “birth” (they were born: black, or Hispanic, or ________) that in any way holds them back in our society, then it signals a failure of America to live up to its story.
Live up to your story, your promise — “a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”
This is the message of Dr. King’s dream. We should remember this, and honor this, in our cities, in our schools, in our hiring decisions, in our nonprofits, in our voluntary associations, in our elections… in every corner of our society .
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill…
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
Let’s all remember this on this special day.
——————–
A suggestion:
Print out the words of Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech. (Click here for the text of his speech). Sit down, pen in hand, and circle, underline, mark up. Let the speech itself speak to you on this anniversary occasion. Yes, you can and should watch the speech. Here’s a youtube link. But a careful reading of the text really is quite the encounter.
First Friday Book Synopsis 