Revisiting Dr. King\'s Dream

Dr. Martin Luther King: In memoriam

An America facing the increasing threat of an entangling war abroad. An America where the right to vote was unsure, despite constitutional guarantees. A world torn apart by hated, by religious and regional divisions and destruction. All of these were realities of the world faced by Dr. King so many years ago, when he made his famous "I have a dream" speech in 1963. Today, Vietnam has been replaced by Iraq as a constant, nagging international threat. Voting prohibitions and segregation has been ended, but still the ability of individuals to freely and fairly make their voices heard through the vehicle of the ballot box remains uncertain in many counties across America. But even in the face of all of these threats, Dr. King was still able to dream of a better tomorrow. And his willingness to dream created a world, while still imperfect, has seen the successes of African-American men and women, proud college graduates and professionals, across the land today.

But, in 1963 Dr. King said, he did not simply dream of racial brotherhood and sisterhood but that "this is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism." Nor is it today. Success must not lead to complacency Today, African-American faces are seen in America's newsrooms, are named across movie marquees, are seen on the pages of leading business and trade periodicals, and are amongst the leading intellectual voices of American academic discourse. From David Shippel to Cornell West, from Colin Powell to Oprah, African-American's presence is seen, felt, and heard across the American nation.

Americans can no longer see those of African descent as relegated to ghettos or footnotes in history. Whether they will or not, all Americans must daily bear witness as to how African-American culture creatively informs American culture in a constant and living basis. Toni Morrison was the last American author to win the Nobel Prize for literature, and it is both sobering and uplifting to think that once, it would have been illegal in America to teach this woman how to read and write, and in the days of King's most famous speech, for this woman to drink from the same water fountain of those of a different race or ethnic group than herself -- while today whites and blacks both delight in her prose and take pride in her literary accomplishments.

But however far the presence of African-Americans have come over the past years since King's speech, life, and martyrdom, one must not forget the racism that still exists in America today. The dynamic force with which African-Americans have been propelled into the so-called mainstream should not cause us to forget how recent and how swift that history has been. African-Americans in American history have only come to such remuneration for their accomplishments relatively recently, even though Black thinker, scholars, and inventors, have always made their presence known, no matter how deep and eviscerating the racism of the time. From the time one spoons peanut butter on one's toast in the morning, the invention of George Washington Carver, to the time one flips on a CD of Billy Holiday at night, one takes in the accomplishments of Black Americans of the past into one's body and soul and culture -- but these accomplishments must not be seen as a replacement for continued success and community involvement.