Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 4 September 2003 — Page 2

Page 2 • The Muncie' i irhes • September 4, 2003

EDITORIAL Dream speech still a dream, 40 years later

It was 40 years ago on Aug. 28 that a relatively unknown young pastor from Alabama mounted the dais at Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., and delivered what is easily the most eloquent statement on civil rights in the United States of America in the last century. Indeed, that speech ranks as one of the best to be delivered during the 1900s and even so far this century. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., then president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech to the 250,000 people who had gathered for the March on Washington, he was also addressing the millions who were not in the nation's capital that fateful day. Through television, radio,

newspapers, magazines and word of mouth, he became the first African American to address and be heard by the vast American landscape. He came across as a rational, thinking, reasonable man who was merely asking the United States to fulfill the words of its Constitution that all men (and women), regardless of color, ethnicity or national origin, were created equal. Dr. King was not a radical or a revolutionary. He was a man who strongly believed in nonviolence, regardless of the provocation. He was also a highly principled man who believed unflinchingly in the words of the Constitution about equality, human and civil rights for all. He believed that government existed to protect its people and to make life better for its

people, regardless of their station in life. That Aug. 28, 1963, peroration, which has been immortalized as the "1 Have a Dream" speech exposed the country to the power and range of Dr. King's oratorical skills. It also transformed him into a civil rights icon. To malcontents, naysayers, white supremacists and saboteurs of the Constitution, Dr. King was nothing but a troublemaker who dared think that blacks and whites should be treated alive. To the rest of the country, he prickled our consciences, he made us think unthinkable thoughts. He made us realize that the Constitution is a living document and that we have a challenge to try to live up to its prescriptions and admonitions.

Dr. King wanted us to realize that the United States is a multiracial, multiethnic and multicultural country where each person should be judged not on the color of his or her skin but the content of his/her character. He dreamed of a time when little black boys and girls would be able to hold hands with little white boys and girls as friends and partners and as Americans. There has been progress in race relations since Dr. King uttered those words. Race relations have certainly improved over the past 40 years. Racial discrimination is less blatant than it was then. There certainly has been measurable progress since an assassin's cruel bullet ended Dr. King's young life in April 1968 in Memphis, Tenn. There are more elected nonwhite officials around the country today than at any moment in the country's history. There are more African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and Native Americans in college and holding middle management and senior executive positions in corporate America today than in 1963. But despite what has been

achieved, we still have a long way to achieve Dr. King's dream of a truly multiracial country. Racism is still pervasive around the country. Diversity programs are under attack from those who have a vested interest in protecting the status quo by safeguarding their privileged positions. We saw examples of that latent racism in Muncie recently during the attempt to rename Broadway as Martin Luther King Boulevard. The Muncie City Council cowardly voted against the move. Some mobilized against the move on the grounds that it would be too expensive and confusing for them to change their stationery and business cards to honor this Nobel Peace Prize winner. It's hard to imagine that there would have been such opposition to the renaming if Dr. King had not been an African American. Yes, we have come a long since Dr. King delivered his speech. But we still have a long way to go before his words can be transformed from a dream to reality. That is our challenge and our opportunity as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech.

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