Each year on Martin Luther King Day, I try to read his 1963 speech and it never fails to move me. It is surely one of the most powerful examples of inspiring oratory in American history, and has a way of becoming very personal for everyone who hears it or reads the text. What separates the ordinary from the extraordinary among us is the quality of our dream, or whether we even still have one. And it doesn’t have to be as profound a dream as that of Dr. King, as long as it is passionately felt within your own heart and mind.
When King was assassinated at the age of thirty-nine on that April day in Memphis in 1968, I was working in the newsroom at KYW Newsradio in Philadelphia. None of us got much sleep for the next several days as violent reactions broke out in major urban areas. I think it says something positive about our national consciousness that his speech from the Lincoln Memorial is what we remember most rather than the violence surrounding his death. King was a follower of the nonviolent philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi.
In fact, there was a direct link between Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, whose mentor Howard Thurman had actually met with Gandhi. During that meeting, Gandhi told Thurman he regretted that his practice of nonviolent protest had not become more of a worldwide movement, and suggested that America’s black population might carry on where he left off.
Two phrases from King’s 1963 speech stand out for me in my latest reading of the text.
We cannot turn back.
We cannot walk alone.
I see many people who have not achieved their original dream turn back from that aspiration, whether because of doubts and fears, or frustration at having not come close to realization of the dream. This is often reflected in our politics, as politicians who had started out with great hopes and dreams and ideals, allow them to be beaten down by the “realities” of our political structures. When I hear the minority leader of the U.S. Senate declare that his highest dream is to prevent the President from winning another term, I wonder if he ever had higher aspirations for himself and his nation, and what happened to them. The dream Dr. King had was not so narrow or petty, it had a grandness of spirit that can instruct us all.
And as to “We cannot walk alone,” this reminded me of something a famous psychologist once said, that a true mark of someone’s sanity was their realization that we all need other people. Think about the recent shooter in Arizona, and all the other deranged perpetrators of violent acts who mostly do walk alone. One of my own favorite Martin Luther King quotes is from one of his sermons:
All I’m saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that somehow we’re caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
I think some of our political figures could take instruction from these words as there is so much conversation today about toning down incendiary rhetoric.
“You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” This reminds me of a favorite quote my Russian grandmother used to repeat often, “Before you try to clean up the world, sweep your own doorstep.”
So your homework assignment for today, if you choose to accept it, is to watch and listen to the I Have A Dream speech and ask yourself afterwards what message it has for you in relationship to your own dream about what you ought to be.
