As we celebrate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, it is perhaps time to look again at his most famous speech. I am not accusing or defending either side in the current political mess. That is not what this site is about.
I do believe that we, as Americans, can express our dissatisfaction with whatever we need to without resorting to violence. I fear the entrenched positions on both sides will rip the nation I love apart.
I have traveled by micro camper across this nation and back twice in the last two years, and I was never treated with anything but respect and courtesy, whether in Canada, Maine, Washington, California, Georgia, or in any state in between.
I have camped in the woods, in parking lots, and in campgrounds. I have met dozens of people in quilt shops, parks, grocery stores, and laundromats, and found common ground with each of them, no matter what race, religion, or gender they were. I worked the 2020 Census and met at least 3,000 people – and only two were less that kind and helpful. I would pray – and ask you to pray with me – that we as a nation can work together toward the essential dignity Dr. King describes in his speech. It has been 58 years. It’s time to start working together instead of tearing each other apart.
Dr. King was speaking of racial relationships. I believe his plea is just a valid today and applies equally to ALL human relationships, whether between races or between genders or between political parties. We need to internalize his plea. Excerpts from his speech are below, in italics.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the worn 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 protests to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force….
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be 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 that I go back to the South with. 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 brother-hood. 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.
And this will be the day.
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father 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 snow-capped Rockies of Colorado; let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes 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 mole hill of Mississippi. “From every mountainside, let freedom ring.”
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to 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.””
Writing in italics is excerpted from “I Have A Dream”, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963