King’s words still ring true

The words reach out across the decades and grab hold. The power of

the imagery and the vision still stir the soul to the core.

“In a sense, we have 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 would be guaranteed the

inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963,

the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were meant to inspire

all races to unite in the struggle of setting a single race free.

They were fashioned to reveal a fundamental truth: that our nation

could never be true to its founding principles until all its people

were treated as equals.

“I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties

and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream

deeply rooted in the American dream.”

The words were spoken at the right time in the right place by the

right man. They stirred the disenfranchised into action and shamed

the privileged into taking notice. They soothed the wounds of those

who had already suffered much in the fight for equality. They pulled

the sheets off the heads of those who would oppress with violence and

perversion of the law.

“I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose

governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of

interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation

where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands

with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters

and brothers.”

As we take time on Monday to observe the birthday of King, whose

long struggle for the equality of black people in America forever

changed our understanding of what it is to be truly free, we should

remember that his dream is still alive. The civil rights movement

really has not ended yet. It is an ongoing struggle, a continuing

battle for the advancement of freedom, and there is still a long way

to go.

King spoke of transforming “the jangling discords of our nation

into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” Who can look out upon the

American landscape and proclaim that our cities ring in social

harmony?

So long as inequality exists, be it from discrimination based on

color, gender or creed or from the politics of greed, we must

endeavor to keep the dream alive.

“When we let freedom 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!”