I watched 1963 on a black and white television in our living room. I remember the March on Washington and recall how some feared the brutality somebody might inflict on the participants, even in the nation’s capital. That was who America was in the eyes of many. We saw the dogs and water hoses used on junior high and high school students just months earlier. The smells and elements of dynamite from bombings here in Birmingham are etched in our memories, so any undertaking to advance our rights took courage.

 

King’s speech, one of many that day, has been chronicled throughout the past six decades as he dreamed of an America where freedom, justice, and equality were the norm, regardless of color, gender, place, or birth status. The March, the speech, and the activism helped birth civil rights and voting rights laws. Black progress seemed to ensue. George Wallace stood in the “schoolhouse door” at the University of Alabama, but James Meredith and Vivian Malone were enrolled anyway. Shopping, eating, and integration would become the new way of life in the South, in states like Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Arkansas.

 

Every year about this time, when we think about the speech, someone asks, where are we now? Has the Dream been achieved? Are we closer? Further away? Well, we do enjoy some “freedoms.”

 

Free to eat and shop anywhere, but black businesses struggle. Free to vote, but only 30% show up. Free to speak, think, and advocate, but where is our unity? We are free to be judged by our character, but we are killing each other at an alarming rate. Justice? Our economic, criminal, and social systems are anything but just. Equality? The average family wealth of Blacks is less than 10% of that of whites.

 

I’m done except for this. Let’s remember the day and the speech, but most of all, let’s reflect on the work ahead. The work to see Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech on August 28, 1963, continues!!