Why DEI Is Wrong, and Why We Have a Holiday: I Have A Dream - Martin Luther King, Jr.
The defining speech of the Civil Rights Era still speaks to us today. Too bad Democrats have rejected it yet again.
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NOTE: Sixty-two years ago, Martin Luther King spoke the words that defined the Civil Rights Era and provided the final moral push to end racial segregation.
King, a Republican, shamed millions of Jim Crow Democrats into abandoning more than a century of evil. Appealing to the highest values of the American Revolution, he left Americans without excuse for their seeing their fellow man through the prism of his most superficial features.
Would that he were alive today to bring such a message! For today’s Democrats, DEI and Critical Race Theory — what my friend James Lindsay terms Race Marxism — drives a new Jim Crow, designed to divide so Democrats may conquer, banishing King’s “table of brotherhood”, replacing grace with grievance.
The only lesson today’s Democrats have learned from King is that they must “move on” from his message if they are to create the coalition of “oppressed outsiders” necessary to manufacture a majority.
King’s message was vital in 1963. It helped create the vastly better America I grew up in. We stand today on the precipice of a new era of darkness. We must resist that wickedness, and press on the Golden Age that beckons.
Perhaps King’s words can help call the wayward home.
Rod D. Martin
I Have a Dream
by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
August 28, 1963
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.
One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.
So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. 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. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.
So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.
The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. we must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. 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.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
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. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
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!"
-- Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963.
👏👏👏💯💯💯🎉🎉🎉 Thank you, Dr. Martin for reproducing one of the greatest speeches in American history given by Dr. King at the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington in 1963. The “I Have A Dream Speech” is a template for the America we need to create. To a great extent we have achieved it. There is still work to be done but since the 1960s, America has come such a long way. As then-Senator Barack Obama said in the Illinois state house in 2008: “The Moses generation did the work to get us 90% of the way there. But we the Joshua generation still have that 10% to go.” We are that Joshua generation he speaks of. We aren’t at the mountain top yet but we’re close. But the final leg of our journey is impeded by such things as DEI and Critical Race Theory. They seek to reproduce white supremacy simply in a different form. Identity politics is literally the other side of the coin to it. I feel progressives whitewash Dr. King’s views on race. They ignore the fact he would’ve despised identity politics. The words “as a black man” would’ve been quite foreign to his lips. He would never have supported BLM or DEI and would’ve despised the race grievance industry. I think 90% of the racism that remains in this country today is because of the extremists in our society on the far-left like Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo and Tim Wise, and Ben Crump and those on the far-right like Nick Fuentes, Richard Spencer and David Duke.
Just look at quotes he said to see proof of this:
“We must never substitute a doctrine of black supremacy for white supremacy. For the doctrine of black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy.”
“God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men, and brown men and yellow men: God is interested in the freedom on the whole human race.”
“The important thing about man…is not the color of his skin or the texture of his hair, but the quality of his soul.”
“Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout ‘White Power!’—when nobody will shout ‘Black Power!’—but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power.”
“The problem is not a purely racial one, with Negroes set against whites…“nonviolent resistance is not aimed against oppressors but against oppression. Under its banner consciences, not racial groups, are enlisted.”
“A political system that elects white candidates because they are white and black candidates because they are black is ethically untenable and morally bankrupt.”
“As I look out and see white and negro faces mixed together like the rivers of the sea, I see only one face…the face of the future.”
Such an incredible speech. Glory hallelujah!