His Dream – Our Dream

You can’t be 50-plus in America and not remember Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. If you are a white and grew up in the South in the 1960s, your first feelings about him, however, might have been a lot different than they are now.

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, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.



Many, if not most white people felt at the time that blacks were not their equal. Some whites who believed in their hearts that African Americans should have equal rights also believed that those rights should be granted gradually over time. Dr. King said that a hundred years of waiting was long enough.

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 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 quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

He was a dynamic speaker who inspired and motivated African Americans to peacefully, but assertively stand up for their rights, to insist they be allowed to live the American Dream. He preached that the freedom our country was founded on should be for all Americans. Whites were afraid of large groups of black people, and Dr. King was leading many of those groups in peaceful demonstrations. To many white people, he was a threat.

Much of that attitude was fueled by fear of the unknown. Whites and blacks didn’t know each other. For example, my original hometown New Orleans was (and still is) a racially segregated city. The population of New Orleans was nearly 50% African American in the 60s but blacks and whites rarely lived in the same neighborhoods. Before high school, I had met exactly two black people: Corrine, the cleaning woman who worked for our neighbors next door, and her husband Jasper, who was their gardener.

It wasn’t until years later, while serving in the Army, that I met the full cross-section of African Americans, including my bunk-mate, a Psychology major at Howard University. We had both left college and enlisted rather than getting drafted, with the hope we’d get a better deal. On guard duty, he and I talked about our love of New Orleans food, Jazz and our families. We learned something we each had suspected all along: we were very similar people.

In a way, we were living Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream:

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.

Now, more than 43 years after his famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that I’ve quoted in this post and nearly 39 years after his assassination in Memphis, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is honored with a national holiday. And sadly, in my opinion, this holiday, which is only officially 23 years old, is already devolving into just another day off with big holiday sales at the mall.

This is not a blog post from a white guy feeling guilty on behalf of my ancestors or even my parents. This is a Boomer sharing observations about the impact of an American hero who walked the streets of our great country during my lifetime. Like we later have learned about many famous people, Dr. King had several less-than-flattering personality flaws. But that does not, in my opinion, take anything away from the profound influence of his words and public actions.

And 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.

If you have a moment, read the full speech. Better still, listen or watch.

His dream was every American’s dream. That is something I believe we should think about tomorrow.