On August 28, 1963, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom ended with MLK Jr’s speech from the Lincoln Memorial that culminated with the “I have a dream” climax for which it became known. Accounts from the day tell that Mahalia Jackson shouted to King from the stage to “tell them about the dream,” prompting him to stray from his prepared text and extemporize the most famous portion of his address.
I was nine years old that day, but had followed the march on the evening news and realized that I was witnessing history unfold. On this particular day, our black housekeeper with whom I had a bond, watched the events unfold on our television while ironing, instead of the daytime soap operas of the era. The photo above shows the event as I remember it, a massive crowd of blacks and whites applauding with press cameras capturing the moment in the black and white oeuvre of film from the era. I lived in the South then, as I always have, but couldn’t quite grasp the suppression of voting and employment rights they were fighting to end.
Sixty years later, much has changed and too much seems to remain the same. What I can’t grasp now is that many of my generation that witnessed the march and events of the 60’s have grown as intransigent and hateful as those that governed the South then. Some issues may have changed, but fundamentally, voting and employment rights are still seen as a zero sum game in which it seems more important to stand atop a crumbling world than to make it better for all.
Even in elementary school, we studied King’s speech alongside those of Lincoln and Kennedy, and I still believe that aspirations and the words that inspire them matter and can change minds and history. I visited South Africa this year and marvel at the courage of so many there that mirrored that of John Lewis a strong and gentle man, Andy Young, and others here. Free elections there are now celebrated but economic inequality remains for them a distant dream.
